September 5--The Chocolate Cake Placeholder.

[zyzyly]

One of my work colleagues passed away last Friday, the result of complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. She was just diagnosed a few years ago, and progressed rapidly. If I had it, I would want it to progress rapidly. She had to stop teaching about a year ago when she could no longer drive herself to work. She loved teaching. She was only in her early 50s.

I got the news via a text message in the middle of post conference with my students. One of them was describing some patient scenario, and all of a sudden I had tears streaming down my face. I had to tell the studentit wasn't their compelling patient story that evoked them. They all knew who my colleague was--the snack cart we put out was in her honor, and now in her memory.

Someone else I know died last week as well. Cancer. Just a few years older than me.

I was thinking about all this, along with learning of the deaths of my two old Air Force buddies recently, as I was struggling to rewrite my doctoral project proposal. The thought came into my head, "I don't want to spend a single minute more of my life on this." And I felt the truth of it in my heart. I'm not going to continue. I'm done.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing things that I love and bring me joy and fulfillment. It might be big things, or it might just be sitting in a room listening to music I love and reading a book. I'm going to pay more attention to my marriage and my wife, my health, and my well-being. Not necessarily in that order.

So, that's that. I have a bunch of cool stuff to write about, but I'll save it for tomorrow.



The view from here, on my walk this evening. It brought me joy.

Comments

[elainegrey]

I'm glad you have such clarity -- and i hope sharing your joy is a joyful part of your day, too.

[zyzyly]

thank you!

[asakiyume]

That's a really moving decision, and a right one. We are here so briefly. Death comes for us all. We can hope that are lives are meaningful for others, but in the end, the only person whom we can be sure to make them meaningful for is ourselves.

I'm very sorry about your friends. The other day this thought hit me--it will probably seem obvious or unnecessary to say, but it hit me with enough force that I wrote it down: Death is what makes life a vale of tears. Those we love are plucked from us.

... But your sky photo is lovely, and this is life too, in this vale of tears, such beauty.

[zyzyly]

I remember my grandma, when she was about 92, telling me that all her friends were gone--she had outlived them all. She still found joy in being alive.

[asakiyume]

Yes, my grandmother too, in similar circumstances. In her last weeks I remember siting with her and her remarking on--coincidentally--the beautiful sky.

[zyzyly]

Both my grandparents were such role models for recognizing the beauty of life.

[wantedonvoyage]

I totally respect that. I think we would all do well to examine how we spend our time, what motivates our choices, and how much joy we actually glean from the ways we spend our time.

Congratulations on this epiphany, I wish it wasn't born of loss, but loss is inevitable and can in its own way teach us, I guess.

[zyzyly]

I have found that loss can bring clarity. I remember something my first wife said, before she became ill, and when I was working about 60 hours a week. She said, "If you fall over dead tomorrow, no one is going to build a monument to you celebrating how hard you worked."

She was right, of course. After she died, I completely changed the way I viewed my life. Over the years some of the old patterns have crept back in, but I seem to be keeping them at bay.

Life is way to short to do things that you don't want to do.

[randomdreams]

Wowie. I appreciate your decisiveness!

[zyzyly]

Lol, it took about 8 months for me to be decisive, but once I did--boom.

[elainetyger]

Congratulations I thought you should have done it many months ago but it was your decision for Christ sake we don't even know each other outside of this venue. Still I was having a mini panic attack in the pit of my stomach every time you wrote about your doctorate.

[zyzyly]

Haha yeah. I feel nothing but a sense of relief. I should have done it back in April, but I needed to get to the point where I got. It was clear.