I am becoming increasingly aware that my moment of death is much closer than it used to be.

A couple of years ago, I began to seriously read the Obits. I’m not interested in who these people are or were. I’m more interested in what makes a good obituary. I mean, I have to face a simple fact. Given that I am unlikely to ever become Wikipedia material, my obituary will have to be my Wikipedia moment. It will have to be good.

Recently, I have caught myself glancing at the graveyards that my wife and I pass as we drive through the countryside. The thoughts and questions that fill my mind are strange at best. For example, is the graveyard overcrowded? Is it a well-maintained cemetery? Are all of the good locations taken? Will I be able to afford it? Even more bizarre are my concerns about the current “inhabitants.” Were they people I would have liked to hang out with when they were alive? If, as some religious groups claim, the dead will rise from their graves after the Rapture, will my immediate neighbours be good people to hook up with when we climb out of our graves and start walking about?

Actually, I’m not all that concerned about the act of dying. It is, after all, an inevitable goal line that I will cross some time in the future. Whether or not the exact moment of my death is fixed in the stars or it changes as a function of each of my decisions, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that as each moment passes, I get closer to that highly anticipated visit from the Grim Reaper.

There is nothing to be done. We can’t stop time. Even if we could, it would only be a temporary interruption of our onward march toward becoming nothing more than a pile of corrupted, decomposing flesh. If we were able to stop time, we eventually would want to start living again and so time would have to start flowing again. With that act of embracing life, our stroll towards that one fatal disease shared by all living things would begin again.

Death is lurking out there somewhere for us and Death has the winning hand. It is inevitable. So why worry? It doesn’t gain us anytime.

What is worrisome is that I seem to be wasting so much of my finite time on nonsense. Each night I look back over my daily activities and I realize how much time is spent on trivialities that suck away my energy and don’t get me any closer to discovering the singular Truth that underlies the universe.

For example, I have become an addict to political news. I’m not sure if I’m more of a news junkie or a political junkie but I do become agitated if I don’t get my daily fix of either. I need to be mesmerized by the nonsensical yakking of all of those talking news heads on television.  Time and again I begin my day promising myself a productive day but it isn’t long before I find myself sitting transfixed in front of the television, watching those bobble heads take a single utterance made by a politician or a political operative during a speech or interview and twist it around, giving it power equal to the Word of God. Thus spake Wolf Blitzer and in a blast of cosmic light, a story is created where none was before. Soon a man or woman is being convicted of a crime in the court of public opinion or being attacked by their opponents. The story, whose origin is found in that Blitzerian flash, grows and grows.

For my part, I become trapped in the back and forth, waiting eagerly for the next juicy detail that will reveal…actually I have no clue what I’m waiting for. In fact, I hardly notice that the juiciest details that I was promised during the next half hour fail to ever show up. Today’s news always becomes yesterday’s news today, but I don’t care. I have already become enthralled by the next issue. The only constants in the world of modern news are that my blood pressure rises and I cheer for my side, even when my side stretches the truth, and I scowl at the representatives of the other side and howl with rage when they lie.

What happened to the days of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw? Those were the days when news agencies just reported the news. They didn’t create the news. Weren’t CNN and MSNBC once respected news stations?[1] When did it become acceptable for them to parse statements, ignore facts and engage in “gotcha” moments in the name of ratings? When did news become opinion and opinion news?

But really, why worry about it? Within the next 60 or so years, all of those “players” in the news business will be nothing more than forgotten worm food; if they are remembered at all by their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren, it will simply be as the source of the wealth that is providing them with a leisurely life.

In fact, why even get too riled up about whether Obama or Romney becomes the next president? In 100 years, they will be reduced down to a paragraph in U.S history books. In fact, there is a pretty good chance that they’ll get no more than one sentence. In 500 hundred years, they will be lucky to be a footnote. In one thousand years, they’ll be remembered no more than me. The difference between them and me is that I’ll be completely forgotten within a month or two after I die. Their march to obscurity may appear to painfully drag on for a while but in cosmic time the difference is insignificant.

As an American, I am uncomfortable about suggesting that an American president will be of little import in history. I, like most Americans, believe in the self-evident truth of American “exceptionalism.” There are moments, however, when my ethnocentric patriotic tendencies are not tendencies and I can see things with complete lucidity. The real truth of the matter is that the British, the Germans, the French, the Chinese, the Persians and the Japanese have all believed they were exceptional. It is this confidence in their own superiority that allowed the British to conquer the world, the Germans, French and Japanese to lead the world into several major wars and the Persians and the Chinese to aspire to regaining the empires they lost 2500-4000 years ago. Considering the destination point of ideas like exceptionalism…wars that devastate countries and people and delusions of grandeur…one wonders if it might be better for the world to find a country or a people that will lead through humility rather than pride of origin.

There is no reason to believe that American presidents will age any better than past leaders of major powers. For most people, if they can remember any of the rulers of ancient Rome, it’ll be a handful at the most; most likely Julius Caesar, Nero and Constantine. When discussing Egypt, many people probably can provide the name of the Pharaoh Ramses. Aside from the fact that there were eleven of them, it is also the name that Hollywood gives to the Pharaoh in all the Moses movies. As for the Popes; toss out the name Benedict, Gregory, Paul, Innocent, John or Leo and you are bound to look like you’ve studied your Catholic history. That is, unless of course, someone asks you which Pope Benedict you are referring to. It is easy to be remembered as a powerful ruler if all the rulers use the same name.

History isn’t kind to those who rule. They spend their lives confidently relishing their place in history and then it grinds them up into dust and lays them in the same ground as the commoners that they once ruled over. To be remembered, you have to do something extraordinary: be the first guy to conquer the known world in a few years while you are still young such as Alexander the Great, rape women from one end of Asia to the other such as Genghis Khan, or become the stuff of legends as your people spread your story while they conquer the world such as Richard the Lionheart.

The simple truth is that both Romney and Obama are destined to eventually arrive in the same place as myself. When they get to the land of “Who Cares Who You Were When You Were Alive,” I’ll be as eager to shake their hand as I currently am.[2]

Though Romney and Obama don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, Obama is correct in his assessment that we are at a critical choice point in the affairs of mankind. The decisions made by people throughout time have always impacted coming generations. But today, the world is so much smaller than it was. The decisions of a few can have wonderful or devastating effects around the world, lasting far into the misty future. Before us lies a human destiny guided by self-interested greed or one where we define ourselves by our charity toward others and the dignity we afford them.

The future rests in our choices.

Pace è bene.