A Million Ways to Die

It could be dramatic. And traumatic. You could be a twenty-five year old doctor’s son, out for an end-of-summer fling, and be bludgeoned to death in someone else’s fit of rage. Or you could be a sweet six-year old child on your way home from fireworks, killed by a teen in a pick-up truck going one hundred miles an hour. You could be a fun-loving adventurer who has traveled the world, and die on a dock after diving into a Michigan lake. But then again, you might be resuscitated and live to tell the tale after all.

It could be quiet. And gentle. (Though Dylan Thomas would beg to differ.) You might slip away during Jeopardy one evening after five years of pain. Or fall sleep on your tummy in the crib with your lovey and never wake up.

You could drink yourself dead or walk in front of a train. You could fight heroically and rage against the disease, only to wither eventually. You could clutch your chest at the end of 26.2 and hit the ground before you ever receive your medal. You could go to work one day and get hit by a plane at your desk. Or free fall with a crumbling building and America’s innocence.

Yep, there are a million ways to die.

But me? I am more concerned with finding a million ways to live. Henry David said it best: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Discovering life instead of killing time? Sounds like a plan. Time will kill ME eventually. So heading to the woods and sucking the marrow out of life as Thoreau advocates sounds like the way I’d like to live. There are worse things than physical death. So many people have given up already, just going through the motions without a spark or a dream or a thrill.

It reminds me of The Princess Bride and Miracle Max who resuscitates Westley when he is only “mostly dead.” I don’t want to live my life mostly dead, just waiting for the Grim Reaper to take shape and shuffle me out stage left.

Breathing deeply, chasing my dreams, running through the woods, sucking marrow, teaching, writing, mothering, laughing: these are for me. I want to live, and not, when my number is called, find out that I had been mostly dead all along.