When we fully understand

Julia ♦ January 19, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

Owen with his PaPa, September 14, 2016

“When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains…it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other.” — Clarence Darrow

The photo above was made at Drew and Megan’s Atlanta home, just ten days before Jeff checked into Walter Reed Bethesda with breathing problems, never to return home again. None of us dreamed it at the time, even though he had been fighting cancer for four years. He was so amazingly strong that even when he was near death, we had no way of knowing it.

No one can take life for granted, of course. Beyond a reasonable caution for safety and concern for healthy living, let us not translate that uncertainty to anxiety that hampers our appreciation of life. One of my greatest consolations is knowing how fully Jeff lived his life to the very end, in spite of the malicious disease that ate away at his physical strength and stamina. His refusal to let illness take his spiritual fortitude and mental tenacity will always be an example for me through the difficult days ahead.

Instead of allowing life’s inevitable brevity to make us fearful and morose, let’s  reflect on what Darrow said about translating that awareness to a compassionate and sympathetic spirit. Every person we will encounter today carries the same sentence of mortality; it’s just a question of time. When I think about it, I realize I want to add to the fleeting joys, not increase the unavoidable pains. I’ll try to remember that next time I’m annoyed or short-tempered.

Here’s hoping we will find creative ways to fill each day with joy, however fleeting, and to help others do the same.

This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.