We Are Finite.

I've wanted to comment about Dean Potter's death for a few days now, but didn't really have the words. This morning I read a piece by Aaron Teasdale, in which he celebrates life-filled days, as opposed to a day-filled life. Potter's life and exploits are worth celebrating. His life is worth examination. Our loss of this adventurer should encourage us to examine our own lives.

The other night I had a dream in which Paul and I went back in time so we could be together longer. The finiteness of humanity seems staggering sometimes. I told one of my best friends so this morning. I feel often that our infinite love and care is stamped out too quickly, like there's never enough time. I fear loss more intensely every day I grow older. I fear finding myself without the ones I love, without ever having shown them all the love I have for them. I read a status yesterday from the marketing director of Facebook, who recently lost her husband. She told of the hollowness, the aching longing she felt and continues to feel. She also told of her efforts to continue to live.

I try to ignore it some days, this fear of loss. On others I try to fight it, throwing punches, yelling obscenities. I try to shove it down when my adventurous child wants to go to the edge of the cliff to see to the bottom, all curls and curiosity. There's nothing more I want than to encourage that nature in him. It has served me well, and is one of my favorite things about my husband.

Everything will end one day. I know that.

It would be easy to sit back and live in a climate controlled cage. But it isn't easy. I see the hollowness in others that comes from loss. Not loss of a loved one, but the loss of self to fear, in a quest for comfort and safety. It's an emptiness I see people try to fill in all manner of ways that are equally as threatening and devastating as the consequences of a life of adventure, without the glorious pay-off of adrenaline and endorphins. Like Aaron, Dean, and any other number of people I idolize, I like to take the path less traveled. The one with the danger flags. It's fun to surmount fear and do something exciting and dangerous, to feel alive.

I realize it is important to let those around us burst through the barrier of finiteness to feel explosively alive. If we place a shroud of perpetual safety and protection over our life and the lives of those around us, it may as well be a death shroud, covering a life half-lived. Live and love, explosively, adventurously, my friends. You only get one chance on this spinning orb. Make it excellent.