Essay About Life Is Too Short

[Cassaundra Marley]

Thedays chart blows my mind as much as the weeks chart. Each of those dots is only a single Tuesday or Friday or Sunday, but even a lucky person who lives to 90 will have no problem fitting every day in their life on one sheet of paper.

The ocean is freezing and putting my body into it is a bad life experience, so I tend to limit myself to around one ocean swim a year. So as weird as it seems, I might only go in the ocean 60 more times:

The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

Like many people, from a young age I was obsessed and interested in works of fantasy and science fiction. To feel transported to magical worlds of various imaginative creatures and diverse places. The luxury of being able to separate from the mundanity of reality is one many children (or nostalgic adults) will be able to relate to upon reflection. Worlds that appear far more creative and engaging than our own are intrinsically enticing to the human psyche and the escapism it allows is no doubt an integral part of growing up for many people (especially those who have also dealt or avoided dealing with mental health issues).

Although we often require a more tangible, objective justification for research, the connection of people to the diversity of life (whether said diversity is fictitious or not) should be a significant driving factor in the perceived importance of conservation management. However, we are often degraded to somewhat trivial discussions: why should we care about (x) species? What do they do for us? Why are they important?

Granted, fewer venues run them. The New Yorker predicted the utter demise of the personal essay only a year ago. My local public radio station, long a hold-out against what appeared to be a gathering tide against the form, was still running them until recently, which is long after NPR shifted to airing far fewer than they once did.

No matter. I advise my students and clients to write them. After all, if you master the personal essay, you can master the scene. Master the scene and you can write seventy-five of them and have yourself a book. So write them. Anyway, they will be back, of course. Like high (or low) hemlines they are reflective of how much we want to show of ourselves.

At Christmas in 2004, my sister, Margaret, began giving me silver. Under the tree that morning were several long, slender but heavy boxes wrapped in white satin ribbon and addressed to me. I could not imagine what was in them: matching boxes, six of them all beautifully wrapped. First of all, she never wraps. Margaret gives gifts still in their shopping bags, sometimes swiping the price tags off as she passes them to the receiver.

All told, they represented a tribal currency that I had once thought was securely in the bank. There was a time when I thought that people were expected to have silver and china and crystal, and that I expected to have them, choosing them at the time of my own wedding. Merely silver, perhaps, to me it had been gold bullion, a representation of the standard below which you did not slip. Then the exchange rate changed, and the flatware would have to be counted among the least of our losses during that time.

What went away with the silver was only really appraised at full value when I saw it again. I looked as best I could at Margaret over the first of the open boxes, but I remember dropping my head close to my chest, hushed except for the quiet exhalation of something long held in, recognizing in that moment that I was not only understood by her but also accepted for who I am. I had loved these things and apparently neither one of us was ashamed to admit it. It was a genuine reckoning between us.

When we were kids, Margaret made herself well understood on the topic of gifts. One Christmas in Douglaston, our hometown, she simply made two piles: The keepers and the take-backs, stacking the boxes in their respective columns right there, under the Christmas tree and in front of the givers. She was 15. I was as amazed as I was appalled, but remained inclined to thank my parents and grandparents and shove the gift in some drawer. Not Margaret, who was honest to a fault as soon as she could speak.

By the time the silver began to arrive there had been an extended period of balance between us. In several succeeding years a piece or two from the pattern was under the tree. Several people asked about it as it was used at dinner parties, and I found that when I spoke of the silver there was a distinct lack of longing in my voice. It was almost as if the precious metal had become demagnetized and had instead acquired a new charge; shifting away from being about them, it was now about us, this family right now. Having been lost for so long must have abetted that response, but it was more than that. Quite simply, I loved it differently. No longer a currency, it was now a decoration, a pure delight to behold.

As I spied the most recent Christmas box, I quickly did an inventory in my head: I had everything; complete place settings for eight, as well as serving spoons, polished and safely tucked away in silver cloth to be unwrapped later in the day for the Christmas feast.

Tearing open the box, I laughed right out loud as soon as I saw it, spitting my tea right down my pajama front as I did. Margaret shook her head and rolled her eyes, taking me in over her half-rimmed glasses as I waved my new acquisition over my head.

Wow! This is a great example of how writing can crystallize emotions and personal history. I love to write essays, and usually run out of anything substantive to say after a few pages. Thanks for posting.

I love this piece, Marion. It almost makes this only child wish she had a sister. How delightful it would be to have someone with the same blood running through their body totally understand and balance me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Moving and instructive, the essay captured the essence of heirlooms. Your portrayal of Margaret is at once glowing and realistic. My favorite part was reveling with both of you at the presentation of the tomato fork. Stuff, as the younger generation calls it, is best appreciated with the wisdom of age.

Grass is not only alive, it is responsive, and in its grass way, aware. Grass, mowed, turns into lawns, but given a chance, it will spring up and go wild in a very short time. It will cover sidewalks, parking lots, and walls. People rarely notice grass and yet they walk on grass all the time. They sit on it, lie on it. How many look down and see that the grass is alive?

My brother takes our dogs and hikes up the mountain every day. Often he follows the tracks of the female cougar who dens high on the mountains. Often he comes across a trail where she is following him. Sometimes they see each other.

She never comes down to the farm but we are glad to have her on the mountain. There are too many deer and not enough predators. We welcome her return as a sign of an ecosystem recovering itself. My brother believes she knows him and recognizes him.

Nevertheless, evidence continues to grow showing that animals are smarter than humans have ever understood them to be. Baboons can distinguish between written words and gibberish. Apes can delay instant gratification longer than a human child can. They plan ahead. They make war and peace. They perform acts that indicate caring. In fact, biologist Frans De Waal has written extensively on morality and empathy in primates and other animals.

As a child, I was always fascinated by the many lives being lived on and around our farm: the domesticated animals we cared for and some of which we ate, or wild animals, some of which we made into pets. When I ranged over the mountainside above the farm, or along the lakeshore, I saw a variety of wildlife, from bears to hawks to ravens. Sometimes on hot afternoons, I would lie on the moss under giant Douglas firs, and part the bits of moss to see the small intense lives being lived underneath: tiny worms, beetles, larvae, or spiders.

But as an adult, more and more, I wonder about all these lives. I think about what it means to live somewhere and truly understand where I am living. The more I learn, the more complex it gets. I have always known that when I walked into the forest, voices, eyes, and ears announced my presence. Recent studies indicate that even the mighty fungi underground, mycelium, transmit my presence.

When I go into the forest, squirrels chitter from tree to tree to far away tree. Often a raven will ghost overhead, cock its head, and peer down. Now I am learning that scientific research has shown ravens can learn amazing skills, that a collie can learn over a thousand names, that parrots seem to understand what they are talking about, that plants can recognize and help each other, that an old growth tree acts as a mother tree to young trees, sending nutrients to their roots. How can I understand this? How do I acknowledge something so vast, so unknown?

I am surrounded by beings whose behaviors, rightly or wrongly, I interpret. How do I find the invisible line between interpretation, anthropomorphism, and fantasy? My life is full of thorny ethical thickets. I keep domesticated animals. I even eat some of them. I ride horses. I work with dogs.

And when I watch animals, both domestic and wild, I interpret their behavior every day, trying to find the boundaries of a shared understanding. What do we share? Is it how our bodies move and communicate? Our senses? Plus we share land, we share an ecosystem, and I believe we share something else, a mutual recognition of being alive together.

What kind of knowledge do they have of us? Over generations, ravens remember people who have harmed them. Do the whales remember whaling ships? Does the prairie remember our extermination of the buffalo?

3a8082e126