If These Are the Last Words I Write, pt II
A couple years ago, I almost drowned in the Pacific Ocean. My feet couldn’t touch the bottom and I didn’t realize the waves were pulling me away from the shore until it was too late. The waves rolled over me and I could barely catch my breath between sets. I was losing energy fast. I remember thinking my whole life and whatever might have laid ahead had brought me to this moment, and this was it. I didn’t panic and my life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just thought about the ocean. “The sea is big and old,” Hemingway wrote.* I thought of how many ships have sunk in it throughout history, how many souls it has claimed. It is home to countless creatures from majestic whales to delicate coral and still undiscovered monsters. It felt like a privilege to die in it. If my life was going to end prematurely, I was glad it would be here.
My would-be death was not about me; it was about something bigger than me, and my life is the same. I am not the hero of my own story and I don’t think my life has to do with me so much as what has touched me and what I in turn have touched.
I saw Megan Hilty sing Christmas songs and Broadway standards in a small club in New York. The world was burning and she stood in a form-fitting, sparkly red dress and sang through grief and I saw the face of God. I was there when the Edge walked out in the arena and played a single chord, and it was a sound the world had not heard since King David played before the Lord. I have read books and seen movies, plays, and paintings that have changed my life, the same way they have changed so many lives over the years.
I have been able to spend my life trying to follow in their footsteps, creating art, living free, and loving people. I haven’t been able to do as much as I wanted and it hasn’t panned out like I hoped, but that’s irrelevant. There would never have been enough. I got to try. If enough of us try, some of us are going to make it. I want it to be me, but it doesn’t have to be me. I’ve had a good run – better than most – and I am profoundly grateful for it.
I’m thankful for every person I’ve loved, even the ones who did not love me back. I’m thankful for every person who loved me in spite of every reason I gave them not to. I’m thankful for the stories and scars I carry from the paths less traveled.
Of course, I made my share of mistakes and bad decisions along the way. I could have been more disciplined, spent less time tying my brain into intellectual Gordian Knots. I could have gotten to where I was going quicker and loved people harder. None of us ever achieves our full potential. We just do our miserable best, and it’s not enough, and we die in the end, but the gods look down in awe.
I don’t know what I leave behind. I hope I leave an imprint of love on the hearts of my people and art that continues to touch an audience. But love and art will last as long as humanity, and whether or not any of it is from me is irrelevant. Maybe we are just amalgamated into the Great Story and whatever butterfly effect the individual has is indistinguishably caught up together in the whole. I got to be a part of it. I don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse, but I’m thankful for it. I had little control over the role I played, and even less over its size and outcome. But a Force greater than me did, and I trust Him.
That’s the weird thing. In spite of everything I’ve been through and witnessed, or maybe because of it, I still believe. He gave Megan Hilty her voice and me the chance to hear it. He gave me so many chances. He gave me time. Everything I have is gift from His hand, even the pain. He was always with me, even when I didn’t see Him and didn’t want to see Him. He will be with me when I cross the River Styx to whatever Heaven waits on the other side.
The story of my life is not about me at all. Everything revolves around the Son. I am a drop in the bucket – He is the whole ocean.
I’m grateful for the day I almost drowned, and one day I will, because I will always swim out that far. It’s the only way of knowing I’ve gone far enough.
J.
*Oily Weather, Ernest Hemingway
Feb. 14, 2024