Where I think about motion while sitting still.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop, tuning into the bustling activity around me. It’s early. There are a couple of girls in business attire, quietly discussing an upcoming trip to San Diego and how they’re going to have to work all weekend. Two students are neck-deep in medical manuals, while a third takes a break from her studies to silently shake with laughter at a video on her laptop. A mother and son share a cup of coffee. The smile over some shared memory, a visual conversation as much as a vocal one. One gentleman is surrounded by screens (laptop, tablet, phone) and sips out of a mug emblazened with the crest of a local law firm. The coffee grinder buzzes, espresso hisses, baristas banter. Nothing is still, everything breathes.
Image via Moyan.
I laid in bed for an hour last night before falling asleep. This is unusual for me, as a year and a half of triple parenthood has saddled me with a sleep debt that will probably never be completely repaid. I’m cursed with a rather robust case of hypochondria which flares periodically, it’s something I’ve struggled with since I was a child (I mean, you DIDN’T spend your 7th birthday totally convinced that you had appendicitis? Damn you Madeline books!) and, while I consider it largely in remission, I’ll periodically run across some new mole or previously undiscovered lymph node in my neck that sends me into a spiral of despair that is hard to explain or defend. The latter happened to me last night (it’s like I have a bowling ball living in my neck) and I instantly plunged into a struggle against irrationality that I’m all too used to. So, I laid in bed for an hour, and thought about endings.
(Aside: Right now I’m listening to a some glitchy, atmospheric electronic track that is oh-so-subtly sampling a Peter Gabriel tune. You have to listen hard, but it’s there, and once you hear it you can’t stop. The homage is gentle and touching, in its weird robotic way. “We love you, Peter Gabriel” sing the bits and bytes, the computer composers.)
It’s interesting how when I think about my ending (i.e. being dead), I think about memories (namely, the memories that other people will have of me) which I suppose is an abstract way of thinking about “legacy.” I know I’ve written about legacy before, and I think in some way it’s the consummate obsession of the largest part of my brain. I think this shows itself in various ways; my devotion to work, my devotion to my family, my devotion to regimentation, my shifting-sands struggle with God, faith, and eternity. The idea (or delusion) that routine and repetition are themselves vehicles of Saviour, that all I have to do is maintain momentum. No brakes, all downhill. The pursuit of “productivity” and “passion,” neither of which leave room for stillness. No one is ever remembered for stillness, right? For reflection? Those who are solitary live in the invisible.
Right?
(Is this selfish? Or is this navel-gazing tendency the natural state of human motivation, and that thing that drives us ever onward? Maybe it’s a flaw in the machinery that somehow keeps the whole thing going.)
In order to understand legacy, I feel like we need to understand motion, but at the same time need to understand that legacy is a result, not a process. Legacy requires endings. It requires culmination and finale, it blooms in reflection. My own tendency is to focus on the endings at the expense of the process, to live in a state of near-frozen paranoia, at least in my own head. A fear of waste and burden of meaning. I’m not sure how to handle it, really, but it’s the immovable wall that I’m sure has a little tiny door somewhere that I can sneak through, a crack that will allow me to pass on my way. I’ve just got to keep looking for it.
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