I know, I know. This is supposed to be bad. Depressing. Unhealthy. I agree, a fixation on the end of life can become so prevalent that one dips into a chasm where nothing has any meaning. But, if you haven't abandoned this blog completely at this point in favor of episodes of Tellatubbies, then bear with me.
There is, I think, an awareness of this looming coda that is healthy, that can remind you of how important every moment is, how fleeting the best of things always are. Is there a perfect balance there? I doubt it. In the mind, nothing is ever perfect. It's like looking for the perfect stormy sea. It is in motion, beautiful and turbulent and full of incredible and hidden power at every single moment that it exists, with none like the last.
But there is a getting closer. An approach of appreciating things without feeling as if there is no meaning. I strive to find it. To reach a point that informs my thinking, decision making and outlook. That led me to buy this diminutive Federal dresser yesterday, or to decide, with my wife, to buy a beautiful new home on a pretty quick time line. Maybe this is just a long way to describe moderation, but if that's a good word for it then please use it. We didn't buy a mansion, but something within our means. But we did it. And with a swiftness and abandon that the very best of life's moments share.
A step along the way for me has been my career in the trade of antiques. With the likely exception of some small number of vintage pieces, the majority of the past owners of just about everything I trade in are dead. They are long gone. In the ground or scattered to the wind, a million moments snuffed in however long it takes to die, instantly I'd imagine. In every early photo, all gone. But as I look through these windows to the dead, I can find in them a reminder that it will happen to me, but yet also an element that that also captured life as it happened, the simple and exquisite thing that existence is for every living being. .
Sometimes it goes further. When they're in a photo and smiling. Sure, they had hard times, they died for heaven's sake! Their lives reached that point that we all fear, yet for that moment this inevitability did not keep them from being happy.
Or consider the beauty in form or utility that one can find in objects from the past. Sure, their owners would ultimately leave this mortal coil, but that didn't stop them from enjoying a flamed mahogany desk in their office. Why should it?
Some will ask why anyone collects anything that is not of this time. Doing so for me gives a vehicle to a plane where I am aware of its limited span, yet reminded of its possibilities. Why cherish some random old object, something so impractical, so useless in a purely pragmatic world? Because I can. Because I love to feel good about things, and when I strike upon something that makes me feel that way in my collecting, I partake.
It may lead me into the past, get my imagination going or satisfy the thrill of the hunt. But really, there need not be any reason, nor rule except to proceed. To follow that which makes you happy, and to rigorously defend against that which does not, either from within or without. That's an approach I think I can apply to many things in this life, however long it is.
