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Assessing your life in the face of disaster
Tragedy forces you to ask if what you're doing really matters -- and to pay attention to the way you spend
your money and your time.
By MP Dunleavey
I grew up in Manhattan. The World Trade Center towers were completed the year after I was born. They have
been, to me, a symbol of the safety and security of home, my hometown, for as long as I can remember.
Since Tuesday's attack, I've heard them described as national symbols of commerce and economic might. I
still see them with a kid's eyes as tall, shiny, slightly ugly buildings that, like much of New York
(and some New Yorkers), were a little too much -- but ya loved 'em anyway.
Now that they're gone, demolished with a quick, insane deliberation that I still can't fathom -- like toy
blocks, knocked down in a fit of rage -- it's as though some part of the underpinning of my life has
crumbled. Now I, too, wonder where I stand. The day after the blast I woke up thinking, what is my
life worth? What have I done of value? Does anything I'm doing have any real meaning? Or am I just
slouching through adulthood, waiting for my cues, cashing my paychecks?
I told my editor that I wanted to write a column about how events like this cause us to stop and re-evaluate
our lives. How a tragedy can slap you into awareness, forcing you to recalculate what you value most in
life, to reassess how you invest your energy, thoughts and actions -- and the time we spend so freely, never
thinking of it as finite. My editor has a way of getting really quiet when he
thinks your idea is bunk.
Fortunately, we were e-mailing, so I didn't have to fidget through the silence the way I usually do.
He just wrote back and reminded me that this wasn't news. Every so often fate
seizes
you by the scruff of the neck and forces you to stare into the abyss of existence -- when a friend is
hit by a car, when you realize 15 years have passed since your college graduation and you aren't running
a Fortune 500 company, when you pass a landmark birthday, when a parent dies.
A vow to live differently My best friend's mother died of lung cancer a year and
a half ago.
I sat up long into the night after her funeral, asking myself: What are you doing with your
life?
Kathleen's mother, Helen, had a gift most of us would hand over our 401(k)s for: She was content.
She had four kids and a small house on Long Island, and on the surface, that was about it. Except that
she loved life. Better than that, she had no quarrel with it.
Helen liked to shop the sales at Marshall's. She loved to sit on her stoop, have a smoke and chat with her
neighbors. She was a terrific dancer. At Kathleen's 30th birthday party -- I can still see the exuberant
crowd, the flashing disco ball K's husband had hung as a joke -- she dipped and scooped and whirled her
daughter through the glittering room as though they were both 14.
After she died, I swear I felt her spirit nudging me (in her vintage Brooklyn accent): Be happy, MP.
What are you waiting for? I vowed I would put aside the self-doubt and dissatisfaction that had become
a habitual part of my life and try to live differently. This is what most of us do -- in the face of death, we
cut a bargain with fate. I promise to rethink my priorities and live a meaningful life -- if you will
please let go of my neck. Did I? Will we now?
Thoughts of peace
Since the attack, there have been many memorial services here in the Bay Area. Candlelight vigils.
People offering free grief counseling and 'healings'.
Last night I went to see the venerable Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh speak in Berkeley. It was a
coincidence that the title for his long-planned visit was, "Bringing Peace to Our Homes, Schools and
Communities."
To my surprise, during his talk, the world-renowned Buddhist leader, poet and peace activist never
mentioned the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or the untold injured, missing and dead. Instead he talked
about how we choose to live our lives in the face of the inexplicable, how we have a choice about whether
we respond to violence with anger or with compassion. Most of it seemed annoyingly simplistic, but his voice
was soothing -- soft, grave and oddly lilting. It had the comforting effect of a back rub, or running warm
water over your hands. He spoke about the importance of being mindful -- one of those overexposed Buddhist
words that really means just taking a second look at everything you do, and then slowing down so that you
pay complete attention when you do it. As he said, "You can be mindful you breathe in and
out, when you walk,
when you eat food or sit on the toilet." Buddhists. They want you to know they do ordinary stuff, too.
'Ten-SHUN!
In my own despair and anger, I didn't feel moved at all. But when I woke up this Friday morning, on that
day of remembrance, I realized that something had touched me. As much as we might wish that we could
transform our lives, to make them more worthy, more valuable, to honor the thousands who so suddenly lost
theirs -- we probably won't. But maybe that goal is unreasonable.
I can't sit down with a calculator and re-evaluate all the ways I've invested in my life -- or not -- and
then create A Life of Deep Meaning. C'mon, there's rent to pay.
On a much smaller scale, however, I can pay attention.
It may not sound like much, it may not make my life any more 'valuable' in a way that can be counted or
quantified. But if any of us were to die, suddenly, violently, unexpectedly, what else would we wish we'd
done? Invested in more blue chips? Sold Lucent sooner? Splurged on the bigger house, the nicer car?
Or maybe we would wish that we had enriched our lives by simply choosing, as often as possible, to pay
attention to the fact that we're living it: to how great a hot cup of coffee really is, to the way a
child's smile suddenly lights up her face, to the incredible taste of summer's last tomatoes.
Pay attention. I think I can do that.
