Michael: Choose Your Poison

Choose Your Poison?: Thursday, January 12, 2017

Riding in the wind
Is like having a gremlin
As a guardian.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Today’s feature at the Spiritual Cinema was The Lake Effect; a movie about how a family deals with the sudden loss of their husband/father. Coincidently, last night Kimme and I were watching Comedians in Cars getting Coffee that featured Norm McDonald, not a comedian I know very well, but he did have what I found to be a funny yet poignant observation about how people say they’re going to take big risks when they get older because, what the hell, what’ve they got to lose? But then when they get older they’re fragility makes them extraordinarily cautious.

This also makes me reflect back on one of my heroes - Ernie Chalekson. He was a fellow trail runner I knew for about 10 years before he died of a heart attack while out running. It wasn’t exactly a sudden death as he had a stroke  a few years before, and many people commented that at least he died doing what he loved.

So now as I’m approaching 60 it’s got me wondering what’s the best direction to take in my upcoming twilight years? I do take a certain amount of risks by cycling and hiking, but I don’t consider myself  the daredevil grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine type. I have no plans to let loose and starting doing heroin or mushrooms. Mushrooms; that always makes me laugh at how naïve I was in college. People would talk about mushrooms and I’d be thinking, “What’s the big deal? I never liked them on my pizza and these people are talking about them like they’re so great.”

I don’t see the joy in dying suddenly either. Sure it usually turns out well in the movies. Loved ones cry. You usually get to come back as a ghost to re-hash old times, give some sage advice, or goad your loved ones into delving deeper into some mystery about you they could never figure out. But I really don’t believe I’d want to bother anybody and they’d probably just shoosh me away or laugh me off anyway.

Dying doing what I love? Maybe. But I’d rather live and keep doing what I love.

Slowly extinguishing like an old candle flame flickering in and out to the weakest of breezes? That seems rather unappealing yet it seems to be the majority choice, so there must be something to it.

I suppose in these times of uncertainty it’s best just to keep plugging away until someone recently passed comes to visit and gives me some of those ghostly insights.