Life Within Finitude - How Bad Is It, I Wondered, Beside A Portrait Of George Washington

Recently, I was sitting in a restaurant, beside a fading portrait of George Washington, as he looked down from above the fireplace. I became wistful about how even the most revered of human heroes are fragile and mortal. They all plod along in finitude like the rest of us, doing the best they can, and then time folds them up and tosses them in the trash basket of eternity.

I felt, as the phrase goes, the tragic sense of life. Are we all finally no more than crumbling leaves, tumbling in the autumn wind?

Then I reflected, as I make myself do during such melancholy and suspect observations, on the wholeness of life. We are also, I reminded myself, the fresh green leaves of spring and the mature ones of summer. And I found solace in their recurrence, beauty, and inherent devotion to the tasks of life. Of course, they don’t have a choice. They blossom, live, and die without volition.

Not us. We can decide to do whatever we like – to live or die and, since most of us choose to live, how we will? And it occurred to me that it is a distinction, in fact, heroic, to decide to live, to do our best, even though we know we live in finitude and are, as far as we can see, mortal.

Of course, this viewpoint can be seen as similar to Camus’s rebel, who vows to live, in spite of his conviction that the universe is meaningless. But the rebel’s adjustment seems incomplete and inherently stressful. He has yet to make peace with life. He is plagued by disappointment, because we do not appear to live in a world where there is an ongoing exchange with infinity, which he interprets as care. And he feels bereft. When he vows to live, it is against life as we find it, not with it.

But is his disposition logical? Would we be better off in a world where infinite influences alter our existence?

The usual questions intrude. In such a world, with invisible levers steadily at work, what would happen to freedom, responsibility, and dignity? How could we even plan?

Then we wonder if life in finitude is actually as bad as it’s often characterized. Maybe it actually is, without whitewashing the downsides, Leibniz’ “best of all possible worlds.”

So we ask if the most intelligent adjustment is just to settle into our lives, relax, and do the best we can, even in the face of “sad mortality.” The adjustment seems right, heroic in a more reasonable way, and even joyful, especially compared to the other adjustments to life that are often presented to our view.

And here’s a consoling thought. Since the earth is finite, without mortality it would have been filled up a long time ago. So all of us who are alive today actually owe our lives to it. Such a thought may not be the greatest source of laughter you’ve ever come across, but it’s at least an interesting ablution.

I was still sitting at the restaurant when I reached this point in my careful perusal of being. I smiled inwardly and raised an imaginary toast to GW.

He did his best, and we enjoy his legacy. He retains his greatness, despite being as mortal as any of us, as we fret and frolic though this blessed, if often stressful, life within finitude.