“THIS WEEK IN MEDIA”
a Special Editorial Edition
Normally we bring you a selection of the funniest, most ridiculous, highest quality, or lowest caliber animated GIFs, pics and videos collected throughout the week. We’re breaking our own rules this week, though, because we stumbled upon something that made us feel… something.
recently stumbled upon the video above, an interview conducted by NPR’s Terry Gross with Maurice Sendak towards the end of his life, and it got me — this is Nick talking to you —thinking about death, the afterlife and my personal brand of atheism. My brand of atheism is something to which I’d prefer not give a name, but since it’s a requirement in order to write about it, atheism gets the point across, but Naturalism might do so a little better.
Whichever term blows your skirt up, though, what sits as the foundation of my outlook is something I call wonderful helplessness, and it is the reason for my sharing the video above. The word “wonderful” here is not intended to be used by its generic definition, the “you look wonderful” sense of the word; but instead in a most literal sense. That is, meaning characteristically full of wonder. Neil deGrass Tyson once said that he finds our chemical similarities to the things around us, trees, stars, fish, etc., hold spiritual qualities. That resonates with me and I feel fortunate for those similarities, for it is remarkable that the vast majority of invisible little things that are stuck together in such a way so as to create Me are the very invisible little things that are stuck together in such a way so as to create a mountain, a grain of sand, an ocean, a drop of water. Even on the most remote of desert islands one can never be alone. Indeed, one is always, constantly not only surrounded by, but touched by an infinite array of invisible little living things.
The comfort of helplessness is in the notion that one bears no true obligation; a lack of judgment (i.e. God’s) isolates self-determinism as a solitary motivator. As I referenced in a prior article, the common schoolroom poster that depicts an arrow pointing to a tiny spec nestled within an arm of the Milky Way, translates as a major stress-reliever for me. In the absence of assumed judgment there is room for error and self-forgiveness. In the absence of fate there is space for individualism.
I try to be as careful as I can to not commit acts of proselytization. I think, in fact, that it’s not only a lot nicer but more effective to avoid conversion attempts. My wife, for example, shares a somewhat different view on all of this than I do. But, she’s as bright as she is beautiful and as kind as she is clever, so the ends don’t simply justify the means, they render the means pretty unimportant. My uncle and cousins wear holy lingerie and they are impossibly thoughtful, creative, enviably funny folks; I once caught one of my close friends mumbling something that sounded like it was from Stargate SG-1 with a little box tied around his head while nodding to a little book, but he’s as generous as they come. For me, though, like Maurice Sendak, I haven’t got faith. At some point I know that one day I will die, one hopes I will be old by then, and my consciousness will cease to be. Such a fate requires me to decide what is important to me; to ask myself what is the best use of my time?
“Even though I will cry a lot when people leave me, when they do I will only love them more.”
I like singing, I like laughing and I like making people laugh. Good deeds also bring my pleasure and bad deeds make me anxious. So, though I admit more imperfection than I would like to, you can assume how I mean to spend my time between now and then. Life, with a capital “L,” has been and will always be. First and foremost, Life is a thing that hasn’t a damned thing to do with Me. I have, by a nearly infinite series of bizarre coincidences sometimes called evolution, inherited an experience of this Life thing for a while. I don’t happen to think that some One or some Thing endowed me with the experience, but it’s cool as hell to have it, so I’m going to take Mr. Sendak’s advice and
live my life, live my life, live my life
I’ll be sad to see people go as I’ve been sad in the past. I’ll be sad when I see my time approaching, but I will always be in love with the world. I will see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful Maples that are hundreds of years old. And even though I will cry a lot when people leave me, when they do I will only love them more.
IN MEMORIAM
Maurice Sendak
June 10, 1928 — May 8, 2012
— A wonderful and wild New Yorker —
