The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.
-- Joan Borysenko
We live for a little while and then we die.
...but, how we do the living part, can extend the frame of our existence in dramatic ways.
If we were to live in complete isolation, that might not be (though terribly reductionist) an inaccurate summary statement. But we don’t live in isolation. We live in utter inter-dependence with everything around us, and it’s in those dimensions that the possibilities of living beyond the short frame of our particular life become realizable. What other people do around me, like it or not, has so much impact on me. And the same is true for me to them.
This is rather obvious in the sphere of having children. But even having children is done in an inter-dependent context in the world. How they see me interacting with what is around me, with those who are around me, sets in motion, almost irrevocably, their capacity to do the same in their lives.
If that is done in increasing ways, then the range of this dynamic never ends. If that is done in diminishing and isolating ways, then that dynamic is thwarted.
This reality is not confined to parents and children. What I do in any given day is in the context of everything else and thereby has an impact on everything else. What I spend my time on, what I spend my money on, how I wrestle with challenging or painful things, what I allow myself to enjoy, what I point to in the world, physical and metaphysical, how I go about my daily existence in one way or another has an impact. I can either extend the reach and glory of the virtues of living or minimize them.
The problem with the summary statement — we live and then we die — misses so much of the power and joy of everything that goes on in between.
