Anticipation

The Atlantic Monthly wrote a great piece some time ago about the death penalty, arguing that it was in all cases cruel. The argument put forth was that the actual means of the execution don’t matter nearly as much as the torture of knowing for months what was going to happen to you, when it was going to happen, and that there is nothing the prisoner could do about it. Whether it’s a horribly painful firing squad or peaceful lethal injection, the cruelty lay in the anticipation leading up to the event.

Not that we’re looking at the death penalty here, far from it. For the most part we remain calm, lighthearted, and of sunny and pleasant disposition. There is something unique though in this tug of conflicting feelings, anticipation, impatience, wonder, hope, fear, curiosity and a hint of helplessness. There are few things though that I can think of that compare to being on a timeline of which we have no control, leading to something of such importance, and no small amount of discomfort on her part. Our train is on the tracks and will go where it will and get there when it will. We’re just along for the ride.

The latest Woody Allen movie makes the case that we rarely acknowledge how much of our lives is due to pure simple luck. To that I would add only that even more is simply out of our hands, illusions of control notwithstanding. Corrie’s birth-plan is for the most part unspecific recognizing that there are some choices we don’t get to make. It’s exciting, scary, and in some sense comforting that all this is out of our hands. Nothing we can do now other than prepare for the inevitable, enjoy our time now and trust that we are not the first people to do this, and in all likelihood, won’t be the last.