One Line Per Life

Being your completely predictable liberal, humanist type of person, my initial reaction to today’s article in the Boston Globe listing the notables who died this year was: How terrible to have your life reduced to a single phrase! For example:

• “Robert Rimmer raised eyebrows with ‘The Harrad Experiment,’ a novel about contemporary sexual relationships.”
• “Christopher Hewett played ‘Mr. Belvedere.'”
• …”actor-puppeteer Lewis Arquette…”

What rich lives are thus reduced to a short string of words. How sad! How wise and compassionate a person I must be to be bothered by this! Yada yada existential yada.

Of course, what’s really bothering me is that I haven’t done enough with my life to be able to reduce it to a four-word phrase. Yes, I’m suffering from a classic case of Obituary Envy.

Categories: Uncategorized dw