The heroes of all time have gone before us.  The labyrinth is thoroughly known.  We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.  Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.  And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.

— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

I began to respond to Jenny’s comments to this posting and eventually realized that my response was going to be more than just another set of comments.  I therefore decided I would dedicate a new posting to my response.

Let’s begin with Jenny’s comments.

I was checking the weather around the country and saw how cold it was in Buffalo, thought of how much Derek hated the cold. It made me sad, very very sad to think of that. He loved sunshine and warmth, heat even. I think of him alot actually, I wish he could see my house and garden. And I berate myself for not acting sooner and more forcibly, not doing something, maybe there was something I could have said or done…. I just wish I’d grabbed him and hauled him off somehow to the hospital when he was so thin, when I knew he was sick……

Now let me respond.

I have given much thought to this situation since Derek’s passing last September.  My response below is what I myself have been learning since then.

Hindsight is always 20/20.  If second-guessing every decision which was not ours to make and every event which was not ours to control ever produced an ounce of usable action which cold somehow reverse the course of events which already are, the world would be a far different — a far better — place.  It is through regret that we mature and it is through loss that we learn to cherish what we have, yet it is through hindsight that we deprecate our own lives and diminish the good within by trying to convince ourselves of some failure, some shortcoming, some awful deed we committed or some critical deed we left undone.  Sadly this accomplishes little except to berate our own sense of self worth.

I do look back and think that he might have been better had he sought medical attention much sooner than he did, but that is not something anyone except Derek could have made happen.  The choice, ultimately, was his and no one else’s.

We tried, Sweetie, but he didn’t listen.  We pushed and he pushed back.  We did everything we could, but the impetus was ultimately on Derek to take action and he didn’t until it was already too late.

It’s sad, it’s disheartening, it’s upsetting, it’s lamentable, but it’s not your fault and it’s not my fault.  It’s also not Derek’s fault because there is no blame except for the disease itself.  Sure, had Derek sought medical care earlier things might not have gotten so bad and he might still be alive today, but I will not attempt to unravel the mysteries of why things happen the way they happen just to second-guess what already is, what was, what cannot be changed.  It accomplishes nothing.

What might have been has never changed what is.

Derek is gone and no amount of hindsight will ever change that.  The decisions that were made were his to make and there was nothing we could have done to change them.  Every person is endowed with free will and the responsibility to make their own decisions; that will never change.  We made it clear what needed to be done, but it was still up to Derek to do as he wished.

Death is a natural progression of life.  It’s the end of the journey for every person on the planet, for every living thing.  It’s normal even when we don’t like it, even when it hits close to him, even when we think we could have changed the outcome by responding differently to those events which seemed to portend the realization of mortality.

One cannot reach enlightenment by running from death.

The universe is simply too large for us to be able to control events to the degree which we would like.  In the grand scheme of things, we simply have very little control over how things unfold.

The best we can do is judge ourselves by the intentions of our actions and not by the actions or their outcomes.

Let me close by paraphrasing a rather Taoistic television character.

The success or failure of your deeds does not add up to the sum of your life.  Your spirit — the motivation which drives you to do the things you do — cannot be weighed.  Judge yourself by the intention of your actions and by the strength with which you faced the challenges that have stood in your way.

The universe is vast and we are so small.  There is really only one thing we can ever truly control: whether we are good or evil.