From Behind the Lens
Living as if you were dying
By Colleen Swartz
September 19, 2008
Anyone who knows me acknowledges I am a National Public Radio junkie. It is an addiction of pleasure that fills my ears with knowledge and opinion and facts but most importantly it introduces me to people. Extraordinary people who live lives I cannot possibly imagine who share their experiences in a way that make me think about my own life.
Recently I met through NPR Dr. Daniel Gottlieb who is a psychologist, author and quadriplegic living in Philadelphia. Dan Gottlieb is an amazing person who lost the use of his body from the chest down when he was just 33 years old. Now, more than 20 years later his wisdom and attitude toward life touched me and made me think about the people that I love to surround myself with.
People ask me all the time, why do I love motorcycles so much and my answer always is the same. It isn’t the motorcycles that I love, it is the people and the lifestyle and the attitude. But what about it do I love? What quality do these people and this lifestyle exemplify that attracts me to it? Dr. Gottlieb told me the answer during his NPR interview. He may be a psychologist living in a wheelchair in Philadelphia but his message is as clear and poignant to us as it is to his patients from all walks of life facing all sorts of problems. Listen to some quotes from Dr. Gottlieb:
“Live as you should live, with death on your shoulder” Isn’t that philosophy one that bikers can relate to?
“I am so grateful everyday, I am so grateful for the change of every season.” An attitude that no one I know doesn’t adhere to.
“When my neck broke, my soul began to breathe. I became the person that I always dreamt I could be and never would have been if I didn’t break my neck and with each time I faced death I became more of who I am and less worried about what others might think of me.” “Most people I know spend their lives trying to be the person they think they should be and never get to discover the person that they are.”
Oh, the joy to be free of what you think you should be and just be?
On his friends, Dr. Gottlieb says, “I am sometimes embarrassed by my wealth.” And what a fitting statement to the kind, quality and quantity of those I call “friends”.
“We could not have life without death, we couldn’t understand it. The closer I come to death; and I feel I come closer every day, feel it, know it, touch it; the more that happens the more precious I feel day time is , night time, colors, knowing you, being here, writing this book, the more grateful I feel for what I have, the immanence of death just makes life more alive. I don’t know if we could do it without smelling death.” Ah, and there is the quote that stopped me in my tracks. That is it. That is the thing that this man learned through his long life as a quadriplegic and I believe is something that; whether it is voiced as eloquently or not; is the basis for so many of my friends in the motorcycle lifestyle.
It is my belief that the thing that separates the biker from the average man or woman is the fact that they are immanently aware of death and that awareness has given such sweetness to their life that the fear of death is less scary to them than the fear of not living.
This interview stuck in my mind and I rehashed it over and over again wanting to put it down to share with you. Then came the news that Cliff Gullet, head of Team Bozeman, was killed during a qualifying run at Bonneville. Although I didn’t know Cliff personally, I know him in a manner of speaking. He was one of the faithful who worked all year long to go fast that one week. Wildman told me that when he talked with , _____, a good friend of Cliff’s, that _____ said, “Cliff went the way that Cliff would have wanted to go. He died doing what he loved.”
And isn’t that the point that I am making? Some would say that Cliff lost everything racing at Bonneville but I am saying that racing at Bonneville gave Cliff more than it took. Cliff and many others like him were fully aware of the danger inherent in doing what he loved and it didn’t stop him from doing it.
We grieve their loss in our lives, but what full lives they had!
To learn this lesson early and without dire consequences in our lives is a blessing that few share. It is a lesson that resides deep inside the soul of so many of the bikers that I know. That fleeting ideal that the risk of living “wide open” is less than the loss of not living at all is that defining quality that attracts me to these like minded individuals.
To die with no regrets is the point of living. I, for one, do not want to leave this world wondering what it would have been like to fully live. To know that the road less traveled was not the one I had taken, to feel that I had not loved, given and experienced life to the fullest. It would be to cheat the sweetness out of every day of life just to avoid death, which will come anyway.
Take a moment to think of those friends we have lost. Those that stick most in our minds do so not for how they died, but for how they lived.
And that is how I see it, from behind the lens.
To listen to the full interview with Dr. Gottlieb, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5361784
Your comments and story ideas are always welcome to colleen@digitalmagicbigshots.com.
