Last week I had something
called an electrocardiogram. It wasn't too bad. First of all, a
nice young lady smeared me with lube and probed me. That alone would
have made it a good day. Then I got to see live video of my heart
beating. Now that was really something.
It took a while, as she had
to get pictures of the old pump from several angles, showing all the
valves and chambers, and seeing how the blood moved. It was fun to
see. But the one shot that really got my attention was a good look
at one of those valves.
It's not a big deal. You've
surely seen something like it on TV or in a biology class. Just a
little flap of flesh, flicking up and down, opening and closing a
passage, moving blood out of one space and into another. Flick,
flick, flick, this tiny little flap of flesh. Over and over, right
on schedule, unchanging, on and on.
Until it doesn't. That's
what I kept thinking about, watching that little flap of flesh. It's
one of those little things in our bodies that we are never really
aware of, those small working parts that flick a tiny fraction of an
inch, or release a certain chemical just when it's needed, or do a
thousand little things that they do day after day. Until they don't.
Because we are delicate things. We imagine ourselves to be strong
or tough or even big, but we are not. We are made up of little,
bitty, breakable things, only as strong as the weakest bit, and
vulnerable in ways we dare not imagine.
I'm not sure what to think
of this. On the one hand it did drive home the idea that I ought to
take care of myself. There's no point adding any burdens to those
little bits, no use throwing off the delicate chemical balance that a
lot of those aging components need to keep working. On the other
hand, I know that at any moment, no matter what I do or don't do,
that little bit of flesh, flicking away moment by moment, could just
stop flicking. Then all this stuff, the good, bad, mad, and
miserable, would just stop.
And I wonder, what am I
doing with the heartbeats that I do have? I don't have time to ask
what I have done with my past heartbeats. It's the heartbeats of
today that I must tend to. Am I enjoying the little moments that
life offers, or am I letting comparatively insignificant things
darken those moments between the beats? When musician Warren Zevon
was near the end of his life, he was asked what he had learned.
“Enjoy every sandwich,” was his advice. Enjoy every one of those
little moments life gives you. They are, after all, finite.
Ideally, life should be
spent following bliss, pursuing dreams, and finding joy in the
moment. But we don't live in an ideal world. There is fear, pain,
tragedy, and challenge. Sometimes in pushing against these and
overcoming them we find our greatest satisfaction, but they are
always there, our lifelong burdens. I'd just hate to hit that last
flick of life and realize that I've been dwelling on pain rather than
living in joy. I think I'd rather go out chasing rainbows than
hiding from storm-clouds.
Meanwhile, one fluttering
little bit of me keeps on moving, to and fro, giving me moments.
