On Our Way: The Final Passage through Life and Death

1. Here (?) We Are

O N E d HERE (?) WE ARE A book concerned with how we move through life and death might usefully begin with who and where we are at this moment in the co-biography of ourselves and the universe. Scientists tell us that the universe started with a Big Bang, or that maybe it didn’t. Life evolved to fulfill a cosmic plan, or maybe it popped up as a fleeting aberration. In our tiny zone of the universe, life will perish in some millions of years, but, then again, it might become a casualty of “Doom Soon,” as others have calculated.1 From a more poetic and spiritual perspective, it has been said that there is profound meaning in the fall of a sparrow—yet others hold that the stupendous surges, flame-outs, dark collapses, and vast scatterings of all that exists mean precisely nothing. And nothing itself is either a prime condition for everything or simply the product of overactive imaginings by scientists and mathematicians at play.2 But more to the point: What’s for dinner? Who’s pitching for our team tonight? Is last night’s fortune cookie reliable in its promise that love, success, honor, and enlightenment will be ours within the next phase of the teasing moon?We have our moments of contemplation about what all of this means and where we’re going. More often, though, we are likely to be engrossed in the scrimmage of everyday life.There’s been a past, and there will be a future. But here we are now.This is our life pulsing in the moment, and it commands our full attention. Just when we are most secure in our assumptions, though, the alarm sounds. Everything familiar and comforting threatens to give way. Our next step might spill us into the void. What comfort, 1 what rules, what guidelines, what meanings then? Some people in some societies seem to have developed firm answers to these questions; other people, including many in our own times, find themselves with shards of traditional beliefs and remnants of redeeming rituals. And so we preface our journey with a brief reflection on how matters stand with us before time and circumstance have further say. RITUAL, ROUTINE, OR OBSESSION? Is it ritual or just routine to start the day with a cup of coffee? Routines are sequences that we have gone through before and most likely will go through again. A familiar routine is so well practiced that it hardly needs us at all. We can daydream or sing a television jingle as we dress in the morning (always slipping a foot into the left shoe first—or is it the right?). These routines can be solitary or interactive. Two individuals, each enacting personal routines, exchange the expected greetings as they meet once more in the workplace. The power of routines is in their unobtrusiveness . Like sophisticated engines, they perform their services smoothly and quietly, permitting us to conserve our vital energies for more challenging events or opportunities. Fortunately, society does not consist entirely of routines. We are saved from so monotonous an existence by the creative energies released through the collision of differing routines, by generational change, and by a genial perversity in the human spirit that thrives on mocking and rocking its own established order. Nevertheless, routinization is among the processes that bind together individual and society. One of the first tasks of the new employee, student, or rookie member of the team is to “learn the ropes,” a phrase that pays tribute to the crucial skills that were required in the days of tall ships. A novice who fails to master the ropes can sink the ship in a storm. Further, we must demonstrate not only our mastery of the relevant skills but also our acceptance of the reigning styles and beliefs. We can retain a smidgen of our own charming or snarling personality, but in the main we must act like everybody else and thereby keep the good ship Society true to its course, with sails puffed by a favoring wind. Routines make the journey of life seem safe and predictable, and it is a nasty whelp indeed who does not buy into this game and insists on reminding us otherwise. 2 / C H A P T E R O N E Routines also do much to make a home a home. My family’s...