Motivator.

It's easy sometimes to get into a routine and become institutionalized. There are bad habits as well as good habits, and there are states of drifting, in which we're not fully aware of the events in our lives, in our small circles or in larger ones. It takes something shocking to pull us out of such comfort zones, although human nature is to settle back into the familiar once the shock subsides.

Tonight as I was running on a treadmill, one of the televisions in the gym, broadcasting a news program, flashed the caption, “Dana Reeve: 1961-2006”. I almost stopped in my tracks before registering where I was. Surely this couldn't be the widow of Christopher Reeve, the Superman of my childhood? There's no sound without headphones in our gym, but once they started interviewing people at the Reeve foundation and showing the pair together I knew indeed who she was.

Driving home I managed to get the story on the radio, and learned that she'd been diagnosed with lung cancer LAST YEAR, which I was unaware of and which is very rare for a nonsmoker. The second post I wrote when I began this site dealt with the loss of her husband. It's unthinkable that the 13-year old son of the pair would lose both parents so close together. I don't know how I would have survived had I lost either of my parents to their health problems when I was younger. In truth, I'm not sure how I'll deal with it as an adult when the time inevitably comes.

Lately it seems we've been losing a lot of people. It's probably the things they did in life to make them significant that we should focus on. When someone dies, especially at a young age like 45 as with Reeve or Kirby Puckett, who died earlier this week at the same age, it makes a person wonder if waiting for anything is a good idea. It's probably just as detrimental to rush into things or take crazy risks, but it's important to realize when time is a factor, that none of us are immortal. Scrubs, a quirky and wonderful show I can never recommend enough, deals with death often and in many ways. Tonight, a dying patient shared the following wisdom with a pair of doctors: ”You know, I've never really been afraid of death? I used it as a motivator. When you know there's an end, it forces you to live.” The episode ended with the somber tones of Pearl Jam's Long Road.

Mortality should be a motivator, but we forget it just like anything else buried in the rigors of everyday life, until we're reminded again. It's a lesson to be learned, then forgotten, then learned, again and again and again.