What will live on

For decades, since I was a child, I've thought of myself as a writer. It's the activity and craft I've practiced all my life. And I've always thought what I was meant to do was write an Important Work.

I don't know, that may still be ahead of me. But I've also always thought that was my way to make my mark on the future. I suppose we all think that in some way: I know I'll die but how do I live forever nonetheless? Parents, I think, have this uppermost in their minds as their children, and then their children's children, grow.

But I've come to realize that immortality is not immortal. I mean, I read things suggesting that civilization or even humanity as we recognize it may not survive our great-grandchildren, and I think that such an attempt on my part is so much ego, an investment it's not in my interest to make. My mark, instead, is meant to be in the mark I leave on other people's lives. This is what I do that will lie on. I mean, really live on.

What I do, gently shepherding people into death as best I can, is more important than anything I might otherwise do. Like writing, it is something I do well, but unlike writing it isn't subject on other people for its practice. I receive from my ministry a sense of contentment of my self I've never known before. It's much the same sensation I feel when one of my beasts, heretofore leery of me, suddenly lays its head on my arm and sleeps. I am at peace with the world and know what I do matters.

This takes a tremendous burden off me. I don't feel as if I'm cheating someone (if I'm honest it was this sense of ego gratification) by not writing regularly. I feel I have more time for reading, for walking, for enjoying things like coffee and music. Admittedly, I still squander that time shamelessly in surfing or watching TV, but I'm learning to curtail those.

None of this means I'll stop writing, especially here. In fact, I suspect it will clear up more time for me to blog, as meaningless as that may also be, given the vagaries of both audience and (electric) power, because I don't need to pay attention to what I think are important events or things to write on (although I will continue focusing on the corruption of the Trump administration and the frustrated anger of people on the wrong side of history recognizing their own irrelevance). And to salve my ego which, let's face it, is as demanding an urge as hunger or thirst. Besides, as Walter Miller, Jr long ago taught us, there's no telling what scrap from the past the future might discover is important.