We breathe matter into all we do.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
Pablo Neruda
[No. 15]
WHAT IF IN THE END, NONE OF IT MATTERS?
Hey everyone.
When I ponder whether being on this planet matters or not, I think of a sweltering August day. We met on campus, which was really just a building of Brutalist concrete. Kathryn spotted my top, BCBG, which wasn’t common in Bologna. It was 2000. I was twenty-five. For the two years that followed, we studied, we traveled, we traipsed around Capri and Naples, we talked for hundreds and hundreds of hours. We were inseparable. She was like a childhood friend; she was too good to be true. She met a boy who spoke no English, and she married him. I translated their first phone calls! Eventually, I came home. Kathryn made a life in Italy. Yet, our friendship remained tight-knit. Five years ago, she wrote to me to tell me she had begun to battle an aggressive disease, and six weeks later she left her body. I still hear her voice. [THAT IS SO KATHRYN] is a statement often heard to this day in my circles. I, too, wish to be remembered.
I am reflecting on where we have been together, me and all of you. We have conversed about the importance of finding our calling, making a map for the wandering heart, and holding ourselves true. Our overarching hypothesis might be that the golden thread of life’s meaning is curiosity [with self, with other, and even with inquiry itself]. Your question feels like a tiny rebel on the shoulder, tempting me to get distracted in this endless quest for wonder.
And yet, I am not afraid. I profess monogamy to the mystery and truth of my soul.
I have wondered the same thing as you, but when I think about my friend who has left me on this plane, I feel a pang of something. I know that something happened, and that it mattered.
I talked your question over with a friend, and she responded with this wise counter-question: [DOES IT MATTER TO YOU?]
Yes, we are made of stardust and we go back to the sky, and yet in the meantime, we possess so much possibility to meet a person, place, or thing with innocence and cheekiness. Saying it doesn’t matter feels grown-up and jaded, like throwing our hands off the steering wheel. Instead I step into the attic to find the chest of costumes and swords, and I ask you, [WHAT IF IT DOES?]
When we isolate which gems we find precious, we become cheerleaders for our individual and collective desires.
I think about tragedy, I do.
About legislation, about danger.
However, we must act knowing that we can and will change things, for better or worse, rather than imagining we will not or cannot.
Each day is a wildly self-fulfilling prophecy.
For we are rooted in the world; there is no out there.
We are each other’s mirrors.
Pay attention because your very face is a primer for revolution and peace.
When we live with fierceness [LIKE KATHRYN], we open the door for others to do the same. We step closer to the people we adore, and we become part of the dreamworld. 
We cuddle, skip, and mess up along the way.
Each day is like a great fortune.
Embrace it.
Feed the elephant.
Climb the elephant.
Be the elephant.
[WE MAKE OUR OWN DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES].
When you are part of the sky, what do you want to remember?
Quick!
Your memories are waiting.
Living intensely (SO KATHRYN) . I have learned to focus on what and who matters to me. It’s meant being unpopular to many and unconventional, but if it works for me and my nearest and dearest, then it’s right, for me and them.
You raise such an important point, JO. If something is in alignment with yourself and your nearest and dearest, that is what matters most–conventional or unconventional. Living an authentic life is to live a meaningful one. x