The last hurrah
Evan died yesterday. He sat down wheezing in a squash court, said he needed a rest and went to sleep for the last time.
For his sake I hope he was right, even if I think it was bollocks.
It’s a curious thing: it doesn’t matter what you do, what you know, who you know or what resources you control, some time in the next hundred years you are going to die, and unless you are Mozart or Einstein or Michelangelo or Shakespeare, very soon you will be forgotten. The tide will come in and wash away your footprints, and it will be as though you were never there. Even if by some digital miracle you manage to leave a faithful and compelling recording of yourself, no one will care.
This is it. One time only. No rainchecks, no refunds, for a limited time only. Live now or don’t live at all. And since nothing of us shall endure, and all this shall pass like the wind in the willows, what profiteth a man to learn wisdom that fades into folly and then forgetfulness?
What, then, is the point of anything? The answer lies within. Do what seems to you the right thing, the appropriate thing, that which you think another should do. Do it because it pleases you. Or do it because it pleases someone you love, which is pleasing yourself anyway, in a nobly indirect sort of way.
Try not to be vindinctive to people, unless you truly think they deserve it so much that it is the right thing to do. And if you really think it’s the right thing to do, then do it well: aristeiae.
I should probably tell you his name, so that he is remembered somewhere, in some small way, and may therefore live on, if only in a small way: Evan Coulston. He is, I understand, survived by some sons. His wife died a few years ago, of cancer. So much for their loving god.