This is by far the most interesting thing I’ve seen on a bathroom wall. Ever. I took this picture in Ben’s Chili Bowl, in Washington, DC. It’s my favorite restaurant in the whole world, hands down. They serve bites of heavenly food in little red plastic baskets. And you can bet dimes to donuts that while you are sitting and eating, you will hear Rev. Al Green on the jukebox.
Right before I moved from Washington, to start up a life in Austin, the good people at Ben’s repainted their ladies’ room with blackboard paint, and left chunks of chalk by the lavatory. I guess they figured if people were going to write on the walls, they could at least do it with some ease and style. From what I can tell seven years on, no one has erased a word. This little gem was chalked high up on the wall, right smack on the air conditioning duct. I knew the moment I saw it that I would spend some sleepless nights trying to answer that question, and trying to figure out how to write that answer down in a way that made some sense. This has made for some heavy duty thoughts.
What would I be willing to die for? Dying is so major. It’s the one thing, the one life experience that we really know very little about. Dying is an action, and most people of faith will tell you that is by no means a final action, just the final action that we know about on this side of things. My friends who do hospice work talk about the “actively dying” the way mid-wives will talk about women being in “active labor”, and the two are eerily similar. Instead of giving birth to a life that will live outside oneself, you are actually giving birth to your own self, on a totally other level. That’s how I get my head around it, anyway.
But I can’t really get a handle on what it’s like to BE dead, much less what it’s like to actually die. Forget about saying what I would die for…I still am trying to get a real grasp on the “what am I living for” option. I suppose the answers aren’t too far removed from each other, not any more so that actively dying and actively laboring, anyway.
I had this scary moment at work once. For a whole morning, I was pretty much convinced that a man with whom I had an appointment was going to be so angry when I refused to give him any more money that he would seriously mess me up, maybe even kill me. I realized then, as I realize now, that my drama-queen tendencies were turned up to around eleven on a ten point scale. But there was just something inside of me that could not let go of that fear. I slept like a rock the night before, but when I woke up the next morning, I found myself almost ritually saying goodbye to things in my house, the cat included. I even made my bed, wiped down the sink, and took my dirty laundry from the hamper in my room to the laundry closet downstairs. I was almost positive I wasn’t coming home, and didn’t want my mom to see my messy room. How bizarre. The meeting went just fine, and the man in question didn’t even yell at me when I told him I couldn’t give him any more money—he wasn’t exactly happy, but he didn’t shank me with a sharpened spoon, either.
Going home that night was so sweet. I didn’t think about the fact that I could get plowed into at high speeds on the freeway. I didn’t think about the fact that I could get robbed and stabbed in my bed if someone decided they wanted to break into my house. I didn’t think about freak accidents or plane crashes or myocardial infarctions. I just thought about how happy I was to be alive—to get to sit in my car and blare the radio in traffic, to call my mom and check in on her day, to hear my nephew shouting babbling kid-speak when I called my brother, to know that my cat was going to be demanding food and attention the minute I opened my back door. This rush of gratitude washed over me, and I was just so glad I didn’t die that day. But the question is still unanswered.
What would I be willing to die for? I would die for my belief in God and Jesus. I would die for my family. I know that. I would die for my friends. I know those things. I’m always really bad at those party questions, when someone is asking you “Would you be willing to sacrifice your own life to be able to discover a cure for *insert your favorite disease*?. The answer is always “yes”, because you have to say yes. Who in their right mind would be callow enough to say, “Oh sure, a cure for HIV or cancer or the herp would be great, but I just don’t think I could give up my hold on living in this world for that. I mean, everyone knows we’re just like five years away from a vaccine, anyway…” Say something like that around the people I run with, and you’ll be handed your hat—after it and your ass have been stomped flat.
But really, would you? Would you die to save people who would never know YOU did that? Would you be willing to die an utterly unrecognized death if it meant that the world would remember the action itself, but not the name of the person doing the dying? People are always willing to die for God, family, honor, etc. At least they say they are, anyway. Because we’re supposed to want to die for those things—not just be willing, but to almost welcome a noble death.
I’ve never been put in a situation where I actually got called out, called to make good, called to take a stand for those things, in a way that actually threatened my life. And I’ll part with a nasty secret—I’m glad it’s never come down to that. Not because I think my answer would be any different if I were asked it with a gun to my head, instead of typing this essay in the comfort of my own bed, with Jinx the Cat sleeping at my left knee. I know myself well enough to say that I would die for the God and my family. Personal honor doesn’t really mean much to me, because it’s tied up with my family and my faith, so that isn’t such a big deal for me.
People make choices every day about what they are willing to die for. I wonder how many of us make conscious decisions about what we are living for, though. The two probably aren’t nearly as much alike as we would like to think they are. There are some days where I’m willing to live for my next pay check—just get me through this day, so I can know I did what I needed to do to get me one step closer to new counter-tops in my kitchen, one smaller pant size in my waistline, one more glance from the cute guy in the corner of the room.
There are days when I am totally numb to what’s going on around me—just making phone calls, sending notes, writing up reports so that my work is transparent and I stay in good graces with the people who’ve hired me. I wish I was better at living for good things—like making a difference in lonely old people’s lives, or being a better daughter to my mother, or friend to my friends, or co-worker to my office staff. So many times, we get so caught up in punching our widgets, we forget that we ARE living, and we will not pass this way again. We live out of habit, and die out of boredom, fatigue, hatred, lack of valuable stimulation—not just die as in cease to respire, but die as in totally stop the action of really and truly living.
JimValvano was a basketball coach for Villanova and a major hero in my life. They were a Cinderella story in the NCAA tournament during 1980 something. Jimmy V got cancer, and it was real bad. Terminal, in fact. But he never stopped talking about living, even as he was being eaten alive by tumors. He talked about living everyday—that to do that meant that you cried, you laughed, and you thought EVERY SINGLE DAY. How exhausting, and how exhilarating. How beautiful and true, as well. If we laugh, and cry, and really think everyday, what we live for and what we die for get a lot closer to being the same things. That’s what I think, anyway.
Right before I moved from Washington, to start up a life in Austin, the good people at Ben’s repainted their ladies’ room with blackboard paint, and left chunks of chalk by the lavatory. I guess they figured if people were going to write on the walls, they could at least do it with some ease and style. From what I can tell seven years on, no one has erased a word. This little gem was chalked high up on the wall, right smack on the air conditioning duct. I knew the moment I saw it that I would spend some sleepless nights trying to answer that question, and trying to figure out how to write that answer down in a way that made some sense. This has made for some heavy duty thoughts.
What would I be willing to die for? Dying is so major. It’s the one thing, the one life experience that we really know very little about. Dying is an action, and most people of faith will tell you that is by no means a final action, just the final action that we know about on this side of things. My friends who do hospice work talk about the “actively dying” the way mid-wives will talk about women being in “active labor”, and the two are eerily similar. Instead of giving birth to a life that will live outside oneself, you are actually giving birth to your own self, on a totally other level. That’s how I get my head around it, anyway.
But I can’t really get a handle on what it’s like to BE dead, much less what it’s like to actually die. Forget about saying what I would die for…I still am trying to get a real grasp on the “what am I living for” option. I suppose the answers aren’t too far removed from each other, not any more so that actively dying and actively laboring, anyway.
I had this scary moment at work once. For a whole morning, I was pretty much convinced that a man with whom I had an appointment was going to be so angry when I refused to give him any more money that he would seriously mess me up, maybe even kill me. I realized then, as I realize now, that my drama-queen tendencies were turned up to around eleven on a ten point scale. But there was just something inside of me that could not let go of that fear. I slept like a rock the night before, but when I woke up the next morning, I found myself almost ritually saying goodbye to things in my house, the cat included. I even made my bed, wiped down the sink, and took my dirty laundry from the hamper in my room to the laundry closet downstairs. I was almost positive I wasn’t coming home, and didn’t want my mom to see my messy room. How bizarre. The meeting went just fine, and the man in question didn’t even yell at me when I told him I couldn’t give him any more money—he wasn’t exactly happy, but he didn’t shank me with a sharpened spoon, either.
Going home that night was so sweet. I didn’t think about the fact that I could get plowed into at high speeds on the freeway. I didn’t think about the fact that I could get robbed and stabbed in my bed if someone decided they wanted to break into my house. I didn’t think about freak accidents or plane crashes or myocardial infarctions. I just thought about how happy I was to be alive—to get to sit in my car and blare the radio in traffic, to call my mom and check in on her day, to hear my nephew shouting babbling kid-speak when I called my brother, to know that my cat was going to be demanding food and attention the minute I opened my back door. This rush of gratitude washed over me, and I was just so glad I didn’t die that day. But the question is still unanswered.
What would I be willing to die for? I would die for my belief in God and Jesus. I would die for my family. I know that. I would die for my friends. I know those things. I’m always really bad at those party questions, when someone is asking you “Would you be willing to sacrifice your own life to be able to discover a cure for *insert your favorite disease*?. The answer is always “yes”, because you have to say yes. Who in their right mind would be callow enough to say, “Oh sure, a cure for HIV or cancer or the herp would be great, but I just don’t think I could give up my hold on living in this world for that. I mean, everyone knows we’re just like five years away from a vaccine, anyway…” Say something like that around the people I run with, and you’ll be handed your hat—after it and your ass have been stomped flat.
But really, would you? Would you die to save people who would never know YOU did that? Would you be willing to die an utterly unrecognized death if it meant that the world would remember the action itself, but not the name of the person doing the dying? People are always willing to die for God, family, honor, etc. At least they say they are, anyway. Because we’re supposed to want to die for those things—not just be willing, but to almost welcome a noble death.
I’ve never been put in a situation where I actually got called out, called to make good, called to take a stand for those things, in a way that actually threatened my life. And I’ll part with a nasty secret—I’m glad it’s never come down to that. Not because I think my answer would be any different if I were asked it with a gun to my head, instead of typing this essay in the comfort of my own bed, with Jinx the Cat sleeping at my left knee. I know myself well enough to say that I would die for the God and my family. Personal honor doesn’t really mean much to me, because it’s tied up with my family and my faith, so that isn’t such a big deal for me.
People make choices every day about what they are willing to die for. I wonder how many of us make conscious decisions about what we are living for, though. The two probably aren’t nearly as much alike as we would like to think they are. There are some days where I’m willing to live for my next pay check—just get me through this day, so I can know I did what I needed to do to get me one step closer to new counter-tops in my kitchen, one smaller pant size in my waistline, one more glance from the cute guy in the corner of the room.
There are days when I am totally numb to what’s going on around me—just making phone calls, sending notes, writing up reports so that my work is transparent and I stay in good graces with the people who’ve hired me. I wish I was better at living for good things—like making a difference in lonely old people’s lives, or being a better daughter to my mother, or friend to my friends, or co-worker to my office staff. So many times, we get so caught up in punching our widgets, we forget that we ARE living, and we will not pass this way again. We live out of habit, and die out of boredom, fatigue, hatred, lack of valuable stimulation—not just die as in cease to respire, but die as in totally stop the action of really and truly living.
JimValvano was a basketball coach for Villanova and a major hero in my life. They were a Cinderella story in the NCAA tournament during 1980 something. Jimmy V got cancer, and it was real bad. Terminal, in fact. But he never stopped talking about living, even as he was being eaten alive by tumors. He talked about living everyday—that to do that meant that you cried, you laughed, and you thought EVERY SINGLE DAY. How exhausting, and how exhilarating. How beautiful and true, as well. If we laugh, and cry, and really think everyday, what we live for and what we die for get a lot closer to being the same things. That’s what I think, anyway.
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