One of the most profound lessons I have learned in my time at Elizabethtown College pertains to the limits of our mortality. We walk a thin line of time like a tightrope with no knowledge of where it ends. That lesson is reinforced by the fact that I will compose my third eulogy in two years as this week comes to a close.
One of the details I have noticed during the composition process is what we say once a person we love enters the longest absence we shall ever know. I found that that there is a tendency to express things that were left unsaid when they were living. I cannot help wondering what those words would have done for those individuals when they were with us. That brings me to a question which I believe has some applicability to others on our campus. Should we speak what is on our mind and live in the moment or be conservative and hold back our thoughts?
I have to admit that I typically choose the latter. I feel as though that strategy allows me to be pensive and to contemplate the weight of my words. As a result, I feel that I am able to deliver accurate commentary about situations and deliver good advice. However, I also tend to overthink things, which delays my responses. As I have discovered, one of the worst feelings to bear is the weight of unspoken words.
I discovered that weight when the World War II Veterans fired a 21 gun salute for my grandfather. The shots cut through the icy February air and their echoes reverberated across the cemetery. What stuck with me most was the movement of the shell casings. They discharged from the guns and trailed a faint mist behind them as they fluttered to earth. Once they hit the pavement, they made a faint tinkling noise like muffled bells. At that moment I realized I would never be able to ask my grandfather the questions I delayed for another day. What was it like being an Italian growing up during the Great Depression? Where was he when John F. Kennedy was shot? How did he meet my grandmother?
On the other hand, living in the moment allows us to express our deepest sentiments and reach the core of our beings in an active way. Henry David Thoreau expressed this idea extremely well in “Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.”
“I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” Thoreau wrote. “I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Approaching life in this way makes sense due to our impermanence. Dr. Jeffery Long, associate professor of religious studies and department chair of religious studies, illustrated this point in his Dharma Traditions class by observing that everything is constantly changing and that we are never the same person from moment to moment. Long used an example from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus to emphasize his point. According to Heraclitus, “You cannot step twice into the same river for other waters are ever flowing on to you.”
These examples show that we must mine the most from our lives because we do not have long in this world. We must constantly be mindful and act with the best intentions to accomplish our work on this earth. That does not mean we should develop a “you only live once mentality” and act according to our desires even at the expense of others. I believe that it means we must offer our thoughts and our services to others in a compassionate way. We must be truthful in the moment and seek to lift others up at all times.
Find someone you care about this week and speak to them with an honest heart and mind. Tell them the thing that you have wanted to tell them for a long time. Let them know how much they mean to you. Every kind word establishes a memory and is a doorway to lasting truth and light. We are all deserving of such things. Why save those words uwntil after the people we love are gone?