Once Again at the Hour of the Wolf

I felt in the depths of the night that I was being charged (by whom?) to find a single vignette in my life that would represent and explain the whole, as if my life were holographic in form.  I failed in this.

This would be a cinematic exercise.  Fine actors in finely-directed films can sum up characters in five or ten minutes, powerfully.  Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane."  Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront."  Charlize Theron in "Monster. " Rod Steiger in "The Pawnbroker."  And yet we must concede that the high points of these portrayals would be nothing without context, supplied by the rest of the films.

And life is not a movie.  Like most people, I roll from quotidien to quotidien, seeking comfort in routine.  The salient points are often sins of omission, failures to act, risks averted, examples of courage not found.  Where I have excelled enough to distinguish myself, it has been mostly because of two things -- a rarely-encountered ability to focus paired with an inability to forget a whole range of things, even at a granular level!

The old Reader's Digest used to feature a column/essay called "The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met."  When I look at the lofty, met or unmet, these might include the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, who was a gifted bongo player and safe cracker, and of course Ludwig Wittgenstein, about whom perhaps I have said too much already in these pages.  Among the low, we have Steve Jobs for his utter transformation of global society in a mostly sorry direction, Ayn Rand for her glorification of selfishness, and [insert politician whom you love to hate here].

In the life review that awaits us all in transition to the hereafter, every single moment is said to count; every single moment is said to have moral consequences; no singular moment that we review will be singularly exemplary in a literal sense, good or bad.  We have to hope, then, that in the event we will meet a singularly merciful God.