Carpe diem

Apropos of nothing, today -- July 1st -- is the 156th anniversary of the beginning of a little something that heppened in 1863 that we now call the Battle of Gettysburg. That battle lasted three days, involved the largest number of casualties of the entire U.S. Civil War, and is often described as the war's turning point.

My cyberfriend kylie-sonja in Australia wrote a post in her blog yesterday about attending the retirement service of Amanda, a friend of hers who recently completed a 37-year career as a minister in the Salvation Army. She didn't mention the Salvation Army but I recognized the uniforms. At the end of her post, kylie included a quotation from Nancy H. Kleinbaum's novel Dead Poets Society:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Kylie said that Amanda's verse is love, joy & service and that she doesn't see retirement changing that.

Since the title of kylie's post was "What will your verse be?" I thought about the question a long time and left the following longer-than-usual comment:

Back when I stopped coding and testing computer programs for IBM for a living and began writing their technical manuals instead, one particularly frustrating period made me ask myself this question:

At the end of my life, how important will putting books together for IBM have been in my long list of accomplishments?

I am now 78 and I know the answer to that question.

Not very.

I have been blogging now for nearly 12 years and the answer about that particular endeavor is probably the same.

Not very.

Nowadays I am grateful to see that my children's lives and accomplishments and my grandchildren's lives and accomplishments are the verse that I have contributed. I know that the powerful play does, indeed, go on and on. And I am grateful to have been a part of it.

"The Harvest of Death": Union dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, photographed July 5 or July 6, 1863, by Timothy H. O'Sullivan. Public domain.