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Message |
| Posted By: |
UT |
| Date: |
19-Dec-2003-03:02:04 |
| Subject: |
Leave 'em laughing |
Back in college, I had a friend named Richard Farrell who was wise beyond his years. Farrell was a hippie, like me, but unlike me, he didn't just talk the talk of his personal philosophy, he walked the walk. Recent news of our friend Steve Kaplan, in conjunction with seeing a TV documentary tonight about the last days of the late, great Warren Zevon, have caused me to revisit that philosophy.
It was pretty simple. One sentence. And it had to do with saying goodbye.
Farrell, in his youthful wisdom, had figured out that the process of saying goodbye to a friend was, in Castanedan terms, a cubic centimeter of chance. You had the opportunity to do something or say something that could potentially leave a lasting impression with the person you were saying goodbye to. Because you might think that you're just saying goodbye for tonight, and that you'll see them again tomorrow, but someday one tonight is going to be the last one, and one goodbye is going to be the last one, and what you said in that last goodbye is going to be your friend's last memory of you.
So Farrell's philosophy became, "Leave 'em laughing."
And he worked at it. He read and reread books of jokes and one-liners. He memorized them, so that he always had one on the tip of his tongue when it came time to say goodbye to one of his friends. His theory was that if practiced this philosophy diligently, every day, that one day, when he died, the last memory that *everyone* he knew and loved would have of him was that he left 'em laughing, that the last thing they remember him saying had made them laugh out loud.
Nice philosophy. We should all be so lucky.
Warren Zevon knew a few months before he died that he was on his way out. So, being an artist and a very talented songwriter, he spent as much of the time left to him writing and recording a few last songs, to leave to his friends as a legacy. Steve Kaplan -- Satori -- from what is said in the obituary articles, didn't necessarily know before he died that it was going to happen but, like Warren, he spent his last few months working on yet another musical composition that he intended to inspire people.
Nice legacy. We should all be so lucky.
Each of these warriors, each in his own way, has reinspired me to take a more critical look at my life, and my goodbyes, and the way I spend my time. Each has reminded me of my friend Farrell, and the way he actually lived his philosophy, rather than just talk about it.
Life is short. We never know exactly when we're going to leave it. But I think we should do our best to leave a little something behind when we leave. We don't have to leave great music, like Steve and Warren did. We don't have to leave 'em laughing, like Farrell. But we should leave something.
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