The Conceit

Mortality. We're all mortal, and just days away from dying.

The method by which the majority of Western society goes on to accomplish great feats of discovery, engineering and art involves a conceipt: We pretend we're immortal.

We may know rationally that we're going to die, and even feel at peace with the idea. But most of us ignore the looming spectre of death, or would find ourselves either paralyzed by fear of the event itself, or crippled by the exasperating pointlessness of the creative process given that we and everyone we know are going to dust.

The conceit is simple: Pretend you're going to live forever - until you die.

When we encounter the death of someone close to us, it not only saddens us at the loss but also pierces the thin veil of our conceit.

Two things have recently reminded me of this:

1) Tearing out my ACL in my left knee. This reminded me that while I "feel" as immortal as ever, I am actually succeptible to physical injury. (So much for the Kryptonian Immigrant fantasy I had going...)

2) My Grandfather broke his ankle. As I understand it, the foot was loose, heel-up and flopping around loose like a sock full of rocks when they moved him to get him to the hospital.

The latter event is troublesome because Grandpa's always been more of a force of nature than an actual person to me. That may sound weird if you don't know him. And he's such a connundrum of mixed philosophies. He's a farmer, a former builder, and a former army nurse. He always reminded me of John Wayne's characters (not the actor himself) in his ruggedness and simple certainty of his opinions. But with that toughness came an aloofness and while I've no doubt he loves me as a grandson, I don't remember ever hearing him say it. But he's shown his - if not love - at least loyalty to his family in his support of them despite the variety of mistakes all family members are bound to encounter through the years.

Now this man who I thought of as immortal is getting really old. His foot is broken. His heart is not working like it should. He has clogged veins and arteries.

But I still think if the doctors ticked him off he would hop out of his bed on one foot and beat them up with his cane. I'm probably wrong about that - but it's my conceit.