Chapter 277

averting our gaze from our finitude - Popova

Sometimes I think that is all that we do in life, that everything action, activity, job, task, relationship, drama, emotion, want, wish, desire, and plan is all aimed at averting our gaze from our finitude. It is an intolerable thought to consider for most people, and so they don’t. They busy themselves with endless mindless bustle so that there is never any time or margin to consider our ends.

This would have been me too probably, up until four years ago. Then I got that terrible phone call from my niece that my brother was gone. Something broke. Something tore. Nothing will ever be the same again. Six months later, my mom was gone. Holes ripped deeper. No longer can I avert my gaze from my finitude. Its too close to home. Sitting right here with us ever day. I am in this chair, in this kitchen, on this May morning, because of those deaths. It changed the trajectory of my days. Forced a reckoning with my dad’s finitude. Realization that there are just the two of us now and all too soon, there may be only one of us.

Each day I ride my bicycle on a 30-40 mile trip, and the road carries me right to the place where we scattered my brother’s ashes. There is no averting of our gazes any longer. You can choose to let this make you more grateful, embrace your blessings, cherish your days and focus you. Or you can choose to let this make you angry at your lack of choice, lack of power, your hopelessness, horror at the shortness of your life, hopeless in the face of limits you did not choose.

Avert your gaze or not, it is still coming. And all you can do is choose how your are going to live now.