This content was published first in The Sunday Letters Journal: https://sundayletters.larrygmaguire.com/p/one-day-soon-you-wont-be-here by Larry G. Maguire on Sun, 08 Jan 2023 11:05:55 GMT
My sense of mortality has been enhanced since my mother passed away a couple of years ago. My father is biding his time. He talks about the inevitability of it almost every time we meet, not in a melancholic way but in a practical accepting way. I think about myself and the life I have lived, and I think about how he must feel now that he’s in his final years. He could have ten, or even twenty left… but maybe not. What must it be like for him now that his work is gone, his family are gone, and his wife is gone? His reasons for being have gone, and one day, he’ll be gone. One day I’ll be gone too. The sense of our finite existence is present in me now more than ever, and I’m asking myself, what am I waiting for?
“It's being here now that's important. There's no past, and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it, and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” ― George Harrison
When we’re young, we don’t think about death much, if at all. We just tear into life. And that’s how it should be. Full of beans, we jump into everything, rarely sensing danger. Christ, when I think about the things I got up to in my youth, it’s a wonder how I’m still here. But there comes a point where the futility of work and business wears us out, and our sense of the infinity of life begins to shrink. Arguably, I have half my life over now, so I better get that thing done. I’ve been fucking around with it waiting to be ready for too long. One day I’ll disappear and risk not having the experience of finishing it. The voice in my head tells me it will be crap, and no one will want it, so what is the point? Another quieter voice keeps bringing me back. Whispering, get me done.
Get it done before you expire – I work with people one-to-one from my practice location in Phibsboro, Dublin 7. I also work with people remotely via Zoom. So, if you, like me, feel the quiet urgency of something that keeps calling, find out how to develop the skills to answer it.
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Hey Larry Maguire
I am 78 this year, and I have no “place”, due to traumatic circumstances. I am living with my sister and my stuff is in storage. I am not painting.
All I have ever wanted in this life is to be an artist and have a workplace.
As you know artists have a different viewpoint of the world and life in general.
The gross emphasis on money and profit, being the main focus of society is very difficult to deal with for me.
What happened to the idea of putting profit back into a business to improve the product or service?
Staying at a good hotel lately, I find cheap TP and stressed-out employees and no artwork on the walls. Cost-cutting is the focus of management in business in today’s world. This makes me sad.
Our mortality is in our own hands. Like your father, I have limited time but I have so much more I want to put on canvas. Does our age make the continuing struggle harder to deal with? I am tired. Our bodies, (mine with arthritis) cause regular daily living chores to take longer. We deal with physical pain that uses more energy.
I am still looking for my place on this earth that has lost its need or appreciation for art and artists. I want 20 more years of life as an artist, so must I live in my other dimension away from this depressing society that once encouraged and supported me, or, move on?
not lost it’s
Hi Susan, sorry I missed your comment when you posted. You’ve been reading what I write for a while now and I value that. I’m sorry to hear your trouble…it’s not right that people, anyone, and any age, should be without a home. Human beings deserve a few basic needs to be met. And as you point out, our dominant profit focused material worldview excuses us our obscene behaviour. Most people feel that it’s not right, but we allow it to continue regardless. We’re on the payroll you see…even if most of us don’t receive very much…enough to get by if we’re lucky. We’re too much inside our heads and not enough in our hearts.
That being said, Susan, there’s no time like the present. Stay focused on your work…that’s all we really have that’s worthwhile. Do what you can where you are…we don’t know the impact we have on people by the things we say and the things we do. We can’t control them, they’ll do what inspires them regardless for better or worse. Our job, when we see the truth of it all, is to do the work – to get out of our heads and into our hearts as often as possible.
Make something, Susan.