Life Goes On

Last night Joyce and I were streaming some of season 2 of Ricky Gervais' funny and moving (and sometimes naughty) Netflix series After Life, which tells the story of Tony Johnson (Gervais), a small-town U.K. print journalist who is struggling mightily with the recent death of his beloved wife. (Gervais also writes and directs the episodes.) (Link to some video.)

At one point last night a couple of characters are talking (I don't want to give away too much), and one of them says, "Life goes on."  Pause. Then the other says, "Robert Frost." The other concurs, and the scene continues.

Life goes on. That didn't ring a Frosty bell with me, so, last night, a quick Google check gave me the source.

It is not a line from a poem (if it had been, I would have memorized the damn thing!) but from an interview he gave when he was 80 to This Week Magazine in September 1954. Here's the entire exchange with interviewer Ray Josephs (ellipses were in the original):

“In all your years and all your travels,” I asked, “what do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about life?”

He paused a moment, then with the twinkle sparkling under those brambly eyebrows he replied: “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that."*

Frost (1874-1963) was born two years before Jack London (1876-1916), a fact that always unsettles me because, you see, I remember Robert Frost. He died when I was a freshman in college; I remember his difficulty reading his poem at JFK's 1961 Inauguration (he gave up, recited "The Gift Outright"** from memory instead--here's a link to that). Jack London just has always seemed to me of a more distant generation. Oddly, too, they both grew up in the Bay Area. I like to imagine them running around together--throwing rocks, watching trains and ships, discussing books--though there is absolutely no evidence that they ever met.

Anyway, that quotation from After Life has resonance for me these days. I think of our son, of his sons and how the latter will live the majority of their lives without me, whom, by the way, they called "Silly Papa" when they were younger, "SP" now. (Can't imagine why they'd consider me "silly.")

We are all ... evanescent. Temporary. Mortal. Human. Oddly, we casually use words like forever and always--but I can't think of two more irrelevant words when you're talking about something that dies! Shakespeare has endured for more than 400 years--but forever? I don't know about that.

Actually, I do know about that. And so do you.

As I've gotten older, I often think about how the things that bother me (don't get me started!) are really pointless to worry about. I can do nothing about them now. A hundred years from now? A thousand? Ten thousand? A million? I don't think that too many people a million years from now (if there even are any) will pause in a conversation, say, "Well, remember what Dan Dyer said? How he felt?"

Frost's comment--though it contains a kernel of hope--is also somewhat short-sighted. Yes, "life goes on"--for a while. And then it won't. In the short term, a kind of comfort; in the long term, naive.

Anyway, we love that Gervais series, and were happy to learn recently that Netflix has renewed it for a third season.

May we all live long enough to see it.

If not?

Life goes on.


*Here's a link to the website where I found this info.

**Link to "The Gift Outright"; link to poem he'd written for the occasion but could not because of the bright sun on his pages