Fragility

It’s been a strange week.

Last Saturday, at a punk rock band reunion show in RVA (that’s Richmond, VA), I learned that two people who had been quite influential in my life had not thrived in the intervening years. One had gone “into hiding” (as he had evidently called it) in Florida, and wanted no contact with people he used to know—he was “off the grid.” One of his former bandmates had managed to track him down and glean this information. I was sad not to see him, but also, in a strange way, heartened. I had imagined a far worse situation for Jeff. My high school bestie and I had actually imagined that he had overdosed some time ago, so it was relief to hear that he was alive, and, in many ways, unchanged. Jeff always had been an overachiever in paranoia and conspiracy theories. There’s something comforting, really, in imagining Jeff somewhere in Florida, having his groceries delivering through a slot in the door, watching TV and chainsmoking, and talking to himself about Gershwin.

Greg didn’t fare as well. He used to own a record store, and I feel confident in saying that there was not a single person in the room at the sold out show who wasn’t affected by him and his store. His store was the hub of the RVA punk rock scene for many years. I spent hours with my bestie at Greg’s record store after school. Greg recommended new music and saved new albums for us. He was insightful and funny as hell. After college, I dated his stepson for a time, and it was his stepson who told us at the reunion show that Greg had become addicted to heroin, gotten arrested, become homeless, and had gone back to New York somewhere. That was the last he had heard, and he had heard it several years ago.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot. About fate. Not the destiny sort of fate, but amor fati, the Nietzschean sort of fate, where who we are is what we become. For Nietzsche, our characters make our fate, and the idea of amor fati is the idea of loving your fate, no matter what it is or where it takes you, because in a way, we design our own fates through who we are.

Then, earlier this week, my coworker died, unexpectedly, of a heart attack. He was a gentle, kind, quiet man, whom I didn’t know very well. But I saw him every day. He smiled every day. And now he’s gone. I keep thinking I see him walking past my office. I keep thinking I’ll run into him in the hall. The day we found out, I heard another coworker crying in the bathroom. Grief and mortality have clouded my office.

And all I can think is that we are such fragile creatures. We try to forget our fragility. We like to pretend that tomorrow is certain, that our trajectory is certain, that we know where we’re going. We tamp down our doubts and we look away from the abyss. We have to. It’s too deep and too big. The emptiness yawns before us and we step backward. We’re meaning makers, and there’s no meaning in the abyss. We are far too delicate to live without making meaning, without the certainly that we’ll have a tomorrow. We plan. We grocery shop expecting to make breakfasts and lunches and dinners all week. We go to work expecting that we’ll always go to work somewhere. We fix our houses and apartments expecting to always live beneath a roof.

And then we don’t.

And sometimes, a surprisingly often number of sometimes, there’s nothing we can do about it.

But what we can do is remember how fragile we are, how fragile each other are, and see that about ourselves and the people around us. We are wondrous, magical, hopeful, delicate creatures. And we should try to remember that more often, and be kind, and generous, and giving, as much as we are able. And for as long as we can.