Participation

flow | Karin C

Right before that bastard named cancer gobbled up the last remaining healthy cell in my coworker’s body, someone asked him how he wanted to be remembered.

His answer?

For participating.

His answer dawned like recognizing a familiar face I hadn’t seen in years.

Participation. Yes. I remember you.

Isn’t participating what we naturally did as children? One of the reasons we were birthed onto this earth? To actively experience the wonder of life? To live each day in awe and curiosity? To ask questions and enmesh ourselves in the answers?

Yet sometimes, somewhere along the way, we retreat. We pull back. Instead, we sit and scroll and tune out. We stop noticing the ants and the frogs and the worms. Our curiosity flattens. We no longer need Band-Aids pasted to our knees or dirt removed from under our fingernails after a day spent exploring. Our participation shifts and changes.

In the poem When Death Comes, Mary Oliver writes that she doesn’t want to end her life having only visited this world.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Amen sister.

If life is a zoo, I want to hop the fence, tangle with life’s tigers and live to talk about it. Climb the necks of giraffes and view my situation from a different perspective. Ride on the back of a chasing cheetah, then slow down with a sloth to experience the contrast between graceful speed and peaceful presence.

Hover with a hawk, taking in its keen awareness. Laugh with hyenas and howl with wolves. Swing around playfully with baby chimps. Plop in the mud with hippos.

Flow through life’s currents with the ease of a fish, then recognize the need for rest and go snooze in the sun with bears.

When my soul exits my body and merges with the ether or whatever mystery juice enfolds me when I die, when I’m no longer tethered to skin and sinew, to tongues and tibias and toenails, to the world of dirt and concrete and feathers and shit, I want to be remembered for participating too.

Karin C

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