Alive and Live

The other day I was in my favorite steakhouse, wherein I spied a man in his 80s, possibly 90s, who could barely walk to the table and barely take a seat. He placed his order, and then sat, barely upright, sipping water. 20 minutes later, his order arrived: A steak fit for Conan the Barbarian and a glass of Merlot that almost appeared to be a double. I thought to myself -- "there you have it: You are either alive or dead, it's a binary thing, and so long as you are alive, you might as well live".

The Ill-Advised Revival

If you’ve seen Pet Cemetery, you will, no doubt, remember how the sheer, utter sadness of losing his son, Gage, caused Louis Creed to bury Gage in the ‘Pet Sematary’, where dead things come back to life. Of course, this does not turn out so well, because Gage is hardly the little boy he used to be after he is revived – he ends up killing his mother and another person before his father has to kill him with his own two hands. Even after this episode, Louis Creed’s grief-stricken faculties continue to subscribe to the flawed concept of revival, as he buries his dead wife in the cemetery, confident that the reduced timeframe between her death and her burial will make a difference in her revived behavior. Not so. This is a great horror story (one of the classics), but also a great lesson in the lesser, perhaps, sometimes, greater, lessons in life: There are times when revival is not the best course of action. There are times when loss should be accepted, no matter how heartbreaking, so that you can move on, instead of trying to revive something that may, ultimately, do you more harm than good. Surrender to the outcome, as they say.