Six Feet Under

There is a down side to downloading all of the episodes of Six Feet Under that you can find and watching them in the space of a few days. I did this and came away with a lot of mixed up feelings about life, the Universe, and everything. The writing on that show is so intensely perfect that every episode rings like truth no matter how outlandish it seems. And being, as it was, a show about life as seen through the eyes of those intimately involved with death, you can't help but find yourself coming to grips with your own mortality, with how fucking random it all seems.

I've always been a pretty faithful girl. Not faithful as in Christian, but faithful as in having a lot of faith in goodness and Karma and the wheel turning as it should. I've always understood in an intellectual way that bad things happen to good people and visa versa, but that knowing never trickled down into my guts the way it has these past few days. Not only do bad things happen to good people, but we have been conditioned to think of life as a brief interlude, a preview, before the really important stuff happens. Heaven, you know. Our eternal reward for good deeds well done.

But a thinking person discards that idea fairly quickly, especially if they investigate world religion and understand that religions are created, Gods are created, in our own image. We make up these rules and regs that remind us that someone is keeping score, like Santa Claus, and we'd better be good for goodness sake. Then there are all the definitions of 'good' that we have to contend with in our striving toward the ultimate Christmas eve. What if there is no Santa Claus? What if all your life you did what you thought you were supposed to do, deprived yourself of joy, of pleasure, of fun that didn't fit in with your list of green light activities or pursuits only to discover that your purpose is to suck the marrow out of the bones of your life and leave no portion of what life has to offer untouched? What if we torture ourselves with shoulds and donts because we are afraid of our true nature, and not because it's the 'right thing to do'? What if there is no such thing as a 'right thing to do'?

This might read like I'm depressed, but I'm not. I'm premenstrual though, so proceed with caution. ;) What I'm exploring here is the idea I lived with my whole life that someday the Universe would put out. That after all I'd struggled to get through, there would be some prize, some red-ribbon bedecked offering to my indomitable strength. That good things would happen in syrupy sweet unceasing succession because bad things had happened for so long.

Life isn't like that. It's random. Good things will happen. Bad things will happen. I will struggle (or not) to ascertain the meaning in all of it, I will keep a record of it, I will investigate it, I will strive to achieve my full potential, I will be good, I will be honest, I will work hard, I will play only within the established boundaries, I will dress appropriately, I will be uncomplaining, I will suffer as we all suffer and celebrate as we all celebrate and then I will be maggot food.

Alternately, I will finish this thought and have a massive stroke, and then I will be maggot food.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter much how it happens. It's going to happen, and if I let days go by without getting as much out of them as I can, I feel like I'm wasting something precious. I'm not talking about becoming a conscienceless consumer, either. I'm not talking about spending all my money on stuff, or eating myself into a heart attack. I'm talking about being aware of each moment I'm in as my possible last moment, so that I can savour it like the last spoonful of ice cream, or the last half glass of wine before there is no more.

I'm not so invested anymore in everything meaning something, in my life meaning something. I'm becoming more and more interested in how to make each day as full and as interesting as possible, because our days run out. There will come a time when I will not have another one, when all the days on the calendar have been x'd out, and I'll be gone, gone, gone.

I want to live forever. I've never felt this way. Knowing this is finite doesn't make it sweeter, as I always thought it did. It makes it too precious. It makes it something I want to cling to, but it's like white water - too fast to catch with these hands, impossible to hold. It will run through my fingers. It will be over.

Before it's over, I want to:

Go to Mexico with girlfriends (no boys allowed).
Go to India with Sultan and meet his father, see the place he was born.
Go to Tibet and wander around with a camera.
Actually write another novel.
Garden more.
Go camping more.
Furnish a house in exactly the way I'd like instead of with castoffs and whatever I can afford.
Can tomatoes on a sultry day.
Sing more.
Dance more.
Throw a clay pot on a potter's wheel.
Learn how to cut hair.
Actually manage to grow a flower garden.
Go skinny dipping under the moonlight with Sultan again.

I'm keeping this list simple, doable, because I don't have a lot of time to waste on dreaming impossible dreams. None of us do.

Feith