The Terrain Changed, But the Orientation Did Not
What defines us is not our roles or even our talents, but the persistent lens through which we meet the world..
I began writing the eulogy the way most of us do, with a résumé.
“Army reserves, Postal service employee, Booster club member, Small-town fixture, Father, Grandfather, Community pillar…”
The list was long and, if I am honest, a little lifeless. It told me what my grandfather did, but it did not tell me who he was. So I scratched it out. Because what he was, at his core, was actually a rascal. Not reckless or destructive mind you, just absolutely delighted with the edge of everything.
If the rule was not to walk on the lawn, he would not walk on the lawn. He would walk on the retaining wall in the lawn: technically compliant, spiritually mischievous, and balancing just far enough into forbidden territory to feel the thrill. When the peacekeepers came to restore order, he would run away laughing, already composing the story he would later tell over coffee or beer, doubling everyone over with laughter.
He didn’t just live on the edge, he narrated it. He brought others along through his epic yarns. All this with a glint in his eye and the unmistakable spark of someone who experienced life as something to be tasted and not merely endured.
And then, at sixty-four, he suffered a massive stroke.
He lost his speech, the control of half his body and, most tragically, the public expression of the very thing that had defined him.. his stories.
Where was the justice in that?
For years, I wrestled with that question. How could someone so animated by story and mischief be stripped of his voice and ability to share his life with others?
But something strange and steady remained. The glint didn’t leave. Even without speech or mobility, the impishness was there through the humour that still lived in his eyes. The edge didn’t disappear, it just moved.
That realization has followed me in unexpected ways. For much of my life, I believed my grandfather and I were opposites. He laughed at the edge while I study it. Where he bent rules playfully, I tend to respect structure.
And yet, as I wrote about him, I began to see a lineage I had missed:
He walked the edge of social rules while I walk the edge of ideas.
He tested boundaries with mischief while I test them with analysis.
Different expression, same fascination.
It has led me to wonder whether what defines us is not our roles or even our talents, but the persistent lens through which we meet the world.
Some people see injustice everywhere.
Some see beauty.
Some see risk.
Some see order.
Some, perhaps, see thresholds.
And we do not explore that lens only through expansion and the joyful, expressive seasons of life. We also explore it through contraction, tragedy, and the parts that feel unfair.
What defines us is not our roles or even our talents, but the persistent lens through which we meet the world. We do not explore that lens only through expansion and the joyful, expressive seasons of life; we explore it through contraction and tragedy, and the parts that feel unfair.
My grandfather explored the edge through motion and story, and then he explored it through limitation. The terrain changed but the orientation did not. There is something strangely comforting in that.
Roles fall away, abilities shift, and public identities collapse, but something more fundamental persists. Perhaps we are not here to perfect a life résumé. Perhaps we are here to explore, from as many angles as life allows, the particular way our being leans into the world.
Perhaps we are not here to perfect a résumé. Perhaps we are here to explore, from as many angles as life allows, the particular way our being leans into the world.
My grandfather leaned toward the edge with laughter. When life narrowed his world, the terrain changed but his lens did not.
And perhaps that is what endures in all of us: not the résumé and titles but the persistent way we encounter the world, explored in expansion and loss alike.
Journal Prompt: What lens seems to persist across the different chapters of your life, in both your expansion and your loss?