Grappling with Mortality: Part 4

After that night in San Luis Obispo, the panic attacks were no longer the secret I kept from my wife. They were at least an acknowledged part of my life. This isn't to say that every time I'm stricken with one that I wake her up and ride it out with her. In fact, I don't do that at all. I still for whatever reason feel the need to suffer through them myself. However, knowing that she's aware of them does actually help me a little.

Funnily enough, Steve Martin actually helped me deal with my panic attacks. Oh, I don't know Mr. Martin personally or anything like that. But he wrote about his own personal panic attacks he suffered through as a man in his twenties. Hearing him describe symptoms that were so close to my own helped me realize that people who I consider to be absolute pillars and icons can have very real struggles with their own mortality and existence.

Since that night I've also become, as this series of musings has proved, much more open about them. I started talking to others about them, and I've found quite a few more very close friends, people who I admire and cherish, have suffered through these attacks at one point or another. While no one ever has any firm solutions, just knowing I'm not alone helps ease my tension about them. I suppose it's almost a cliche, but not feeling isolated in your life's drama has a way to make one feel much less like an outsider.

I've tried in the time since outing myself to my wife to just accept the indefinable nature of some of Life's biggest questions. No, I still don't know if God exists, if there's a level of existence after we die, or whether we'll ever see our loved ones again once we're gone. I know the odds are stacked against this. I know that science holds no proof of any of this metaphysical and spiritual stuff.

But so what? Does any of this stuff actually matter? Do these religious and philosophical questions have any answers that will change the way I live my life? Even if I knew the answers, would it change me? Would I suddenly stop going down the path I'm on now, in favor of choosing something that is more congruent with "the meaning of Life?"

The answers, of course to all those questions is: I have no clue. The more I think about these things, the more resolute I am in my belief, my utterly convicted belief, that I have no clue about any of this stuff. I can't have a clue, because as soon as I do, I'm going to be six feet under...unless of course they cremate me when I go. And for the record, I think I want to be buried just in case I can come back in a zombie uprising. It's hard to reanimate ashes.

That to me is the point of Life...to not know the point. If we all knew what happened next, we'd stop dead in our tracks and not do anything divergent, subversive, unique or I daresay, artistic. The fleeting nature of our lives makes it imperative that we live our lives under the auspices that we don't know, and won't know, until it's too late to go and ruin the surprise for everyone else.

This doesn't mean we should be amoral and go around hurting each other because what happens after we die "doesn't matter." Of course it matters. It matters to the poor people we leave behind. Our legacies are all tied to the way we decided to use this precious gift we all get.

I don't think Ghandi used his gift any better than Steve Martin did. I don't think any of the Popes (there should be an awesome new word for the plural of Pope) have lived more important lives than John Belushi did. All throughout history so many people have lived their lives in a way that honors the preciousness of our time here on Earth. And there have been plenty that have lived their lives in a way that completely disregards that preciousness.

I don't know that there's a right way to pay respects to the chance we all have to be on Earth once. I just know that you can't live your life worried about what happens after we're no longer here. Everyone gets to "make their mark" in life. Maybe my mark won't be as large as Christopher Columbus' mark was, but through my kids, and through the words I write, and the silly stupid things I do here on this site and elsewhere, I will leave something behind...what it'll be worth to anyone outside of myself is again something I can't help or influence.

The other night I had my first full-fledged panic attack in about two or three months. The whole time my wife and I were in the process of buying our home here in Escondido, I never had one. I think my brain was just completely distracted and consumed with that process, and there was no room for anything. But as I got into bed that night, the darkness crept in, the nausea floated up through my toes and into my belly on its way to my brain.

I was short of breath, and the intense focus on the "void" of death was there again. But this time, the clouds lifted much sooner. I didn't stay awake for a couple hours, fretting over questions I didn't have answers to. I just rolled over, shut my eyes a little tighter and told myself that this panic attack, like everything else we go through, would pass.

I'm not sure exactly how long it took for the attack to stop that night. It could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been almost an hour. I fell asleep quickly enough though to not feel any differently the next day. So what does all this stuff I've written about my attacks add up to?

I don't know.