You may recall that an asteroid whipped by earth last week at a heart-stoppingly close distance.
If it had hit earth, no one on the planet would ever have forgotten it.
That's the way it is with disasters that did not happen. Sadly, more than enough disasters DO happen that it's comforting to celebrate one or two that we know did not.
A letter in yesterday's mail included a quote by Marcel Proust that relates directly to last week's near collision. It was in a fund-raising letter by Crossing Choir Director Donald Nally:
Just think of how many projects, travels, love affairs, studies, it – our life – hides from us, made invisible by our laziness which, certain of a future, delays them incessantly. But let all this threaten to become impossible for ever, how beautiful it would become again! Ah! if only the cataclysm doesn't happen this time, we won't miss visiting the new galleries of the Louvre, throwing ourselves at the feet of Miss X, making a trip to India.
The cataclysm doesn't happen; we don't do any of it, because we find ourselves back in the heart of normal life, where negligence deadens desire. And yet we shouldn't have needed the cataclysm to love life today. It would have been enough to think that we are human and that death may come this evening.
What are you and I putting off doing today that we would regret not doing were an asteroid to crash into our heads tonight?
P.S. Yes, it was a fund-raising letter. Donald Nally writes the most interesting – and I trust, effective – fund-raising letters!
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