Sometimes you hear something that shakes you in a way that won’t be unshaken, or at least that’s the way you hope it’ll be; that the cracks will ache enough to remind you the ground’s not as solid as you pretend it is. This piece from Stephen Jenkinson is one of those times.
“People say to me all the time, ‘How do you keep going? What’s the point? How do you ask yourself to keep going, when the futility is so palpable?’ And I say to them, ‘hey, the last part of what you said is the answer to your question.’
I know all of my enterprises will fail. I know that already. I’m not doing this, any of these things, holding out hope that somehow anything’s going to change as a result of doing them. All I’m trying to do, is, participate in some small way, in the small collection of memories that will accompany my death. That’s all I’m trying to do. Is have a small part to play in whatever those memories might be. Understanding now that the way I’m proceeding is helping to author those things that people will remember, if they’re inclined to. But there’s not much more to it than that. But, that is not a recipe for futility, that is what I’m trying to to say. One of the things I learned at the deathbed is, that’s the whole thing. That’s the magic of it, is that our willingness to remember turns out to be a kind of banquet, that we don’t know how to invite anybody to, and we’re not sure how to cater for it. But the remembering is the food.”
—Stephen Jenkinson, in an interview with Ken Rose