Paddleton
Last night I watched Paddleton, a movie about a terminally ill man, Michael, choosing to euthanise himself with the help of his best friend, Andy. It’s a funny movie, in a quite unamerican way, sweet, and gentle. At one point at the end of the film, Michael, knowing he has only an hour to live, goes outside, wrapped in a blanket, to walk one last time in the sun. He and Andy pass under a tree, and Michael sniffs a branch. Andy, who is neurotic, tells him not to do that, because of the microorganisms and lichen. Michael asks what harm lichen could possibly do to him in the remaining fifteen minutes of his life. They bicker.
It ought to be a tender moment, a moment in which all life comes into focus, there is no more pressure, and Michael is free to realise with tears in his eyes what a gift it has been to be alive. Instead, he spends his final minutes squabbling about lichen. But that is the tender moment. I am sure that is part of the film’s message: that the beauty of life doesn’t consist of Walt Whitman euphoria and states of aesthetic ecstasy; the beauty of life is arguing about lichen with your best friend. The beauty of life is pizza nights and smoko behind the potting shed. The beauty of life is always there, and though we are not all saints and poets - though we may not be moved to tears by the sunset, and though we constantly forget to show our love to the people we love - the beauty of life belongs to us nonetheless.
My great-aunt died in 2014. I remember going for a run the day after she died, and remarking just how little the world had changed. Taboos and movies skew our vision of death, to the point that we think of it as some great melodrama that bathes the whole world in weeping. But death isn’t like that. I sense, in the scheme of things, death is something quite small. I’m starting even to think that death is just as small as life. Death is the end of one journey and the start of another, just like marriage or retirement; perhaps we are nervous as we approach death, but we are nervous in the same way we were the day before we started school, when everything seemed so big and new to us. In Paddleton, death happens in the suburbs. There is no violin music or lamentation; death is the result of a couple of pills taken like aspirin for a headache on the bedroom floor. It happens suddenly - a quick decision, and Michael is gone. In the morning he was there, in the evening he is not. But the sun still sets. New people move in to his flat. Life spins on. It always feels like death ought to be something groundshaking, and we are always surprised when it is not. It is tender and beautiful, but so is life. The sky doesn’t feel the need to weep. If anything comes crashing down, it is only our dreams.
The longer I spend with my spirituality, the more it comes to resemble tenderness. Lawrence Durrell said of himself that, “like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.” I underwent a similar process with my religion. I thought God was some grand ecstasy that rained like manna on His chosen few. Perhaps that chosen few does exist, and manna does rain on them, but that is not God. Or it is God, but God is more than that. God is as much in a highway as He is in a state of samadhi; He is as much in forgetfulness as He is in remembrance. God is - I feel that’s the profoundest thing that can be said of Him. My conception of spirituality used to look like mountain ranges, with great upward strivings and awful plunges into despair; now it resembles the flatlands by the coast. I live a simple life, plod along , and every now and again hear a rumble, look over my shoulder, and see the sea. The sea is nothing otherworldly or dazzling; it is just water. But it is beautiful. In this metaphor, the sea is my sense of the preciousness of life. It is the spirituality of tenderness, the knowledge, deeply held, that all this came from nowhere and passes into nothing - we live a brief and wondrous miracle. It is a feeling of silent gratitude; not a grand show of thanksgiving or faith; just the ability, from time to time, to sit quietly, wrap my arms around the world, and feel the birds sing. It is the ability to be moved and touched, the gift of occasionally falling silent, so silent I can hear my own heart beating, hear my soul murmuring its thanks. It is always a gift; it is never earned. It is grace, and the only worthwhile response to grace is prayer - not prayer in the sense of hand-wringing and wailing, but simply the willingness to wait patiently, and accept God’s invitation when He decides to tender it.
Towada Konokuchi
Kawase Hasui