Chris Jepson: How we might live

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

― Plato

I turn 66 today. I anticipate approximately 17 more years of life if family history is any indicator. I may get an extra few months or so—maybe a year—as I did not consume nearly the amount of whiskey and red meat of either my father or grandfather. But then again every generation has its vices.

I’ve jokingly said—but only sort of—that I didn’t start thinking until I was 36. Suffice it to say I was no boy prodigy. I did not compose glorious compositions at a young age as did the precocious Mozart or write as gloriously as Percy Bysshe Shelley and die immortal at age 29. I was, however, greatly advantaged at birth because as the fates had it my parents were, to use Garrison Keillor’s expression, “above average.”

Perhaps, in one way I am out of the ordinary. I became mindful at a relatively young age that this is it. For whatever the reasons when I hit age 20, I became acutely aware that, all things considered, I had maybe 60 years remaining in the ol’ fuel tank. Some 45 years later I’m now down to roughly 6,200 remaining days, but who’s counting. None of this knowledge or awareness makes me particularly anxious or concerned. I am at times a little miffed, however, that I do not have more time to live, as being alive is such a grand experience for which I am profoundly grateful.

I’ve given speeches over the years on happiness, making the case for optimism, the meaning of life, etc. So, what’s my takeaway on all this? I do not believe in a personal god. Neither do I subscribe to a heavenly afterlife or a burning hell, nor are we born in sin. That would all be so very comical except for the divisiveness and suffering such irrational beliefs create for humanity. Most of us today get 80 or so years. How then should we live it?

Fairy tales are often illuminating on this subject. I recently saw the latest Disney version of “Cinderella” and highly recommend it. It is visually quite magnificent and I expect it will win Oscars for set design and costuming (stunning). The Grand Ball is charming. The plot has been updated of course, as few women (girls) today really believe that “someday my Prince will come” and take me away from all this (misfortune, abuse, tragedy, my humdrum life, etc.). Today’s Cinderella is confident and self-assured and would willingly sacrifice her own happiness for the greater good (of the kingdom).

Cinderella’s mother, on her deathbed, elicits a pledge from her daughter that she lead a life that is both courageous and kind. That is good advice for any of us, anytime.

Courage, I believe, is not something we all innately possess. It sometimes takes circumstances to manifest courage. Warfare does that. At times instinct has the individual courageously diving into roiling waters to rescue the drowning child. It took courage and years of frustration for Rosa Parks to refuse in 1954 to give up her Montgomery, Ala., bus seat to a white person.

Kindness, however, is something we can all give provided we’ve not had our compassion beat out of us.

As Mark Twain so eloquently observed, “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Speak it. Live it. Try anyway.