This Could Be The Last Time, May Be The Last Time, I Don't Know.

4000 weeks. I mentioned it while back in this post. If you do the math, it equals 76.6 years. The average lifespan. My mom is that age right now, and there have been many people known to ups and I over the years that didn’t make it that far.

In the back of my mind, I consider myself extremely lucky to not only know that my mom is within a call or text, but that she’s in good health overall and happy living with my dad (who isn’t far behind) in Mexico - a lifestyle many people from the US try to grab a hold of when they move to Mexico. Walks by the beach, church, the occasional boat cruise around the bay, wine, and a meager group of friends with which to exchange repartee and gossip because she’s - you know - human.

And every time my parents come to visit, I always wonder if it will be the last time I’ll see them. I always go outside with them to help them pack up the car (they drive here every time), and I FaceTime with them for the first half hour of when they head back home so that they know what lane to be in because asshole drivers may fuck with them. It’s easy to get confused on our highways so it’s the least I can do. And every time I hand up with them once they’re on the open road, tears go down my face like salt water tracing its way home.

And every time I leave the house to go to work, I know over my head is the possibility that I might have seen my wife and son for the last time. The probability of that happening is low, but it’s never zero.

The Existentialist Spectrum

So of course, if existentialism were on a spectrum, we’d be living in a Final Destination Universe at one end, and on the other end of the spectrum, we’d be living in a universe that would not be sustainable because nothing would die. To quote Forrest Gump’s mom, “Death is just a part of life.” But if you really think about it, the universe does not care if we live or die. The universe does not care if children die. Humans over the last however long they’ve been around (it hasn’t been that long) have made a world where it’s now unacceptable to die from methods of prehistoric yore, like by being food for an apex predator, or drinking unsafe water. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that we are all in a shooting gallery in the universe, because what wiped out the dinosaurs could happen again, and to us. And on a large enough scale, that was like a ball bearing hitting a marble. We are the small ones, we are the ones playing as unwitting participants as single celled organisms on the surface of the marble in this game. It’s not that the scale is big; we’re not that important overall on that scale. If you don’t know what a gamma ray burst is, well, I’d hate to kill your buzz.

Any time you drive your kid to school, any time you make coffee, any time you fold laundry, it could be the last time. And what makes so many of us take it for granted? Simple - being fucking human. Because on our way to take your kid to school, you might think of what responsibilities you have for work, zoning out because you’ve done the drive a thousand times (that is, if your kid isn’t talking to you). While making coffee, you might tend to some of the dishes that were left overnight in the sink. While you’re folding laundry? It’s such a mundane and repetitive task that you might think about Hulk Hogan’s fall from grace as you’re doing it and realize folding laundry is over in what seems like 2 seconds. It’s hard to be grateful for even being able to do all that while in the moment, even more so if you have ADHD.

We’re Important Because We’re Temporary

Anchoring your gratitude in mortality feels more and more real as the years go by. It’s hard to convey to a young person how fast it all goes. At least for me, it used to be haunting, like the feeling you get when you’re treading water in the open ocean and you don’t know how deep the water is. Not so much anymore. The urgency to make things happen gets more and more urgent.

It’s why so many petulant problems in life are just that - petulant. In the grand scheme of things, they don’t really matter. Except health problems. But in the minor inconvenience of being late, oversleeping. wondering if you offended someone, etc. are things that fill your anxiety cup day in and day out, you won’t remember those things in 5 years. I mean, what would Carl Sagan say? His life was cut short by cancer, and he told us to take into account that we are on a little speck of space dust.

There are some (including the Walt Disney Co.) that say that the real measure of one’s earthly contributions is how far into the future your name and memory are spoken well after you are gone. I disagree with that though - because those who have gone down in history as villains or are currently on their way to being remembered as villains will continue to be learned about for generations to come, for better or worse. It does give credit to the notion to being kind to others on the micro will have a butterfly effect on our world that our futures desperately need.

Think Globally, Act Locally - My Ass

It seems silly also given that all most of us get is 4000 weeks. What can we do in those 4000 weeks to be grateful as fuck for the world around us? What can we do to honor those that came before us? What can we as living mother fuckers that are alive in the present day on this planet do to make sure that whatever sacrifices those that came before us are not thrown away? The saying “think globally, act locally” in my opinion is so short sighted because it doesn’t take into account the future. What can we do to have those that come after us be grateful as fuck for our contributions to their world after we exit, or 50, 100, 300 or more years after we exit? How can we be less complacent - not for just ourselves, but for those who will be our descendants 50 years (that’s in your grandkids’- great grandkids’ adulthood, you do give a fuck about them, right?) after we all expire? Just because we die does not mean that the world we were in ceases to exist also when we make our exit. What actions are currently in place on your part that move the needle toward their overall wellbeing? Only you know the answer.

And this is far from the last time, as far as this newsletter goes, just so y’all know.