Being Centered in a Spinning World
How can we keep life in perspective? I don’t really know how, because the world changes far too fast for me to find a very stable center.
Today a fine finish carpenter came to install the drawer pulls for the beautiful new desk and bookshelves my wife had made. He seemed to have brought the wrong pulls. It turned out that they were right but he only had half the number needed. Now whether to put in half, or wait for the rest to come in, or go with single pull larger handles seemed, given the cost of the furniture, important. We were discussing, as if it were important, whether they should be exactly 5 inches apart.
Then the phone rang, and a dear friend told me that her daughter, whom I’ve known from her pre-teens years, just died. Cancer. Six weeks from diagnosis to death. Nothing to do but attend her funeral. Kind of puts the drawer pulls in perspective. Right?
Minutes later I’m laughing hysterically if ruefully. I Googled the cemetery, and this being Los Angeles, (even in the Valley) the site gave a list of all the famous stars who are buried there! There is even an interactive map to get to the graves of the rich and famous, the once envied and formerly glamorous.
Laugh, cry, eat, dance and love. Sic transit gloria mundi and sic transit trivia mundi
Comments
Dear Jonathan,
Life is strange -- alternately tragic, comic, and all points in between. So sorry to hear about your friend's daughter.
God bless,
Chris
Posted by: Chris Weinkopf | September 20, 2007 5:31 PM