soul meets body
An exetensial post:
I've been thinking about death recently. Not in a morbid, depressing way, but in a "what do I really want out of life" way.
I'm a fan of Boston Legal, and recently, Micheal J. Fox was on there, playing a terminal cancer patient. Not a exactly a stretch. But his dying character has a funeral before he's actually dead, because as he says "I wouldn't know who showed up if I waited until I was dead".
Too true.
Everyone seems facinated with how many people are at there funeral. I think I care more about how many people are with me now. And I'm far more interested in quality, not quantity.
Anyway, what do you talk about at the funeral? About the person, what you liked about them, what set them apart from everyone else. Which got me thinking, "what would I want people to say at my funeral? What have I done that sets me apart from everyone else?"
There's gotta be something, right?
So I'm trying to make a list of things that I think make me unique. Perhaps slightly narcisistic, but I've been sick and feeling like crap for > 1 week now, so I need an ego boost. However, I must note that my wife has been a shining star for me lately, always happy and cheering me up, so it hasn't been all bad. I'm just sick of being sick.
So the list
-I make a point to surround myself only with people whom I feel are intelligent. This is not strictly in the academic sense, more in the logical or reasoning sense. I get frustrated too quickly with people who cannot follow logical conclusions as I see them. I make a god-awful teacher.
-My taste in music is all over the place, but consistantly seems to be about 90 degrees from what all my friends like. I don't hate all the stuff they like, but I like so much more and quickly tire of the "norm". I always worry this makes me seem like some kind of music snob.
-I spent the first 18+ years my life saving fanatically for nothing in particular. I was notoriously cheap to the point of angering my friends. Since getting a real job, I have gone out of my way to try and make up for that, by purchasing a kegerator and hosting several get togethers and the like where everything is provided by me. I ended up finding that I actually really enjoy hosting parties by doing this. I really want to erase this cheap image I have, even though it is largely still true. It's just that it used to be that I was cheap to the point of alienating the few friends I had. At this point, I'm hoping that I'm at least still frugal, but not viewed as a total cheapskate by friends and family.
-I am detail-oriented, at least with the things I care about. I suppse that's largely true of everyone though. But when it comes to the things I want to do right, I can do what I consider a good. highly detailed job more often than not. This is mostly my opinion, since I know I can just as easily do a half-ass job when it's not something I care as much about.
-I can multitask. It seems like I've always had to, and although everyone does, I always seem to juggle more than most. I don't know. Maybe this is debatable. Everyone has to multitask. In fact, maybe I'm actually worse than most, and that's why it strains me so to think about all the things I should be doing.
-I am inventive. I am constantly coming up with many ideas for things I think would be infinately useful to me, and possibly several other people too. But I lack the time to implement them all, or even start doing so.
-I thirst for knowledge. I'm back in school, and I don't hate it, even though it's time consuming, and incredibly uncomfortable socially. I really like to learn new things, my life feels stagnant when I cannot do new things.
-I'm fairly proud of the shape I'm in. I've been working out consistantly (minus a few months here and there due to various surgeries) ever since I was 13. I actually find it fairly remarkable that I have been lifting weights regularly for >20 years. I'm no Mr. Universe, but I could be in a lot worse shape.
-I am learn physical skils quickly. I can do several physical tasks required to get most household repairs done on my own. It has also allowed me to become pretty good at a couple of sports, notably wrrestling and judo. And competent enough at several others to hang with people are are good, like raquetball, tennis, table tennis, diving, swimming, soccer, gymnastics, track, softball, and volleyball. This leads quickly to the next item...
-I am incredibly competative. Is this good? I think so. I almost cannot not take something seriously. I have to win at whatever it is I'm doing. I try to temper it in most situations so that I people are still willing to actually to hang around me. I don't even let my kids beat me in stupid board games. This has led to me always doing everything I can to get better at whatever sport I'm participating in at the moment. Typically lifting weights, running, o rdoing agility drills on my own. But I do think my success in sports has been because I am so competative.
-I am self-motivated. I've always been able to set a goal and ultimately get there. Right now, I can't think of many unfinished goals I have. Most are sports-related, like winning state wrestling in high school, so it's not like I can actually acheive that anymore. But my parents were good at just planting seeds in my head of what needed to be done for success in life, and I made sure on my own that was going to acheieve those things. Two things I can think of off hand were to get the best possible grades in high school, and graduate from college.
So somehow, this needs to tie back into my funerual, or my dying, or something similar.
I guess if at my funeral these things were mentioned, and possibly some other wonderful things about me that I might have somehow overlooked, that's about all I can hope for.
I just see things everyday that make me realize how fleeting life is. Some days I feel indestructable, the next I realize how closely I just skirted certain death. And I don't want to go down in history as the cheap, cynical bastard I used to be. I'd like to think I've evolved into something more than that.
An afterthought: I've told Ann this before, and for almost no good reason other than my slight Irish geneology, I want bagpipes at my funeral. I've just always thought that instrument was awful sounding, and was only really appropriate at funerals.