Our Universal Horizon carries lessons aplenty. In the Harry Potter stories, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore once said that to the well regulated mind, death is just the next great adventure. My maternal grandfather died from a farming accident when my mother was young. He lingered for days, then after a long period of quiet, his last words right before the moment of death were, "It's beautiful."
Steve Jobs was surrounded by family. His gaze rose above them all, toward the ceiling of the room, and he said one word three times, his last use of language before his own death. The word was "Wow."
In a column on great uses of language in recent journalism, Frank Bruni just wrote this: <<Finally, I could pick any number of the sentences written by Sam Anderson in his superb profile of Laurie Anderson in The Times, but I’ll instead showcase words that she once wrote — and that he highlighted — about the death of her husband, Lou Reed, in 2013: “I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou’s as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn’t afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life — so beautiful, painful and dazzling — does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”>>
Could it be that we too often fear what's really wondrous and chase what's really fearful? Could it be that we tend to get many things that wrong, and perhaps the way forward is to reconsider some of our most persistent attitudes? We need to see beyond appearances into the deeper realities. Maybe a walk on that wild side is due.
