DEGREES OF IMPORTANCE
Saturday, December 4, 2021
Height and weight, heft and depth are weights and measures, so should we wait and then measure?
And, what is heft anyway?
Is heft significant, and how does it compare to gravitas?
Are these equivalent words – or is heft perhaps a less aloof or a less aristocratic sounding word?
I’ve been pondering life and its value lately – my own, how I see others, and how I remember too many who are gone. I’ve focused my thoughts on those who are gone. I’ve had occasion lately to send condolence notes to people I know who’ve lost a father. I write to ones who’ve lost mothers too, but I know I put more thought and effort into my chosen words when someone has lost their father.
I’m sure there is a connection between that and my personal experience of having a better relationship by far with my father than I had with my mother, so I remember him better and more warmly. I could fake it and say I cared for them equally, but that is neither true in remembering them than it would have been when they were both alive.
I wonder, if we could go back a century – to the time of the last pandemic, if people then spent as much time and focus as we do now on life, death, value, worth, and memory?
The value of our lives is measured two ways; by ourselves and by the world. Unless you’ve invented something magnificent or changed the world somehow, been a celebrity or done something notorious – the world doesn’t much notice your life or mine, nor does it care.
Our value, our values, and our measurement metrics are screwy.
What we value, what matters, in our life is not likely to matter much once we are gone.
People will value how they felt toward us, not what we had or amassed, not what we did for anyone else – just how we mattered to them.
My dad mattered a great deal to me. My mother, not very much. And my memories reflect that.
I matter to very few people.
Don’t feel sorry for me – because most people matter to very few.
I matter to only a handful of people.
Mattering to many more would only be a delusion.
A handful is plenty.
One is enough.
As for having none – well, to have none, that’s a sad tragedy.
We should all try to avoid being one of those.
And, to Alberta residents only: THIRD ACTion Film Festival is doing a 50/50 raffle again – buy a ticket, be a winner + make the pot richer, for a great cause – draw date is Dec. 22nd.