Unexpected Endings

I finished a book today on the C train. I didn’t know I was going to finish it, I wasn’t planning on it—I thought I had many more pages left. But little did I know the acknowledgment section was quite long, and so when I turned to the final page, I wasn’t the slightest bit prepared to say goodbye.

And it was a hard goodbye, since I’ve been reading it for a very long time—almost three years, now, and I’ve grown very attached. I bought it in a local bookstore in Sierra Vista, a small town in southern Arizona where my grandparents lived, where my dad grew up. I started it the day I bought it, sitting on the back porch of my grandparents house, looking at the mountains that were slowly being covered up by the growing housing development they lived in. The book title is called Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness by Charles Foster, although that doesn’t matter much (and I think the author would agree). It is a fantastic book that has changed my life, but for more reasons than just the words on the pages.

I started it when my papa, grandma, and dad were out of the house at a doctor's appointment for my grandma. I didn’t know it at the time, but while I sat there and read in the peaceful desert afternoon, my grandma was making the decision to not undergo chemotherapy for the cancer that had come back, the cancer that was spreading too quickly, the cancer that would lead her to Heaven just three months later. 

I started that book when she was still here. Now, she’s been gone for over two years, and in a strange way, closing the pages for the last time felt like saying goodbye to a part of her. As if, while I still read it, she was still here, because she was there when I started it. 

Even though that's not how that works, and book or no book, she took her final breath on September 16, 2022. 

But grief is a funny thing, isn’t it? 

You don’t think about the person you lost very often, and then you find yourself finishing a book unexpectedly on your way to work and getting teary-eyed on the C. 

You may be wondering—three years to finish one book? For starters, it’s non-fiction, so I think that makes it a little better. In addition, it’s quite cerebral and thought-provoking, so sometimes I had to take breaks. Also, it made me think of my grandma. 

The book is all about what it means to be a human, which is a question thousands of people have asked and yet no one has found an answer. Foster looks at different parts of human history, stretching as far back as one can, and observes how certain historical events, phenomena, and developments have shaped humanity, and much more, people. This author, like the others, made many observations and theories, but never once claimed to truly get to the bottom of it—because, really, who could? We all know that merely asking the question what does it mean to be human matters much more than any answer any author could come close to finding. 

There were a lot of things that Foster said, and discovered, that I thought were beautiful, though. And if any author could come close to discovering what being a human really means, I think it may be him. Here are some quotes that I really loved that almost got to the bottom of it: 

“To live with infinite possibility, and to bear bravely the responsibility for choosing between them: that’s being a human.” 

“Humans acquire their significance through relationship.” 

“What are we? Dazzling creatures, every electron within us vibrating in unison with and, if we allow it, union with every other electron that the universe contains.” 

“To be human: believe that you will endure. To be human: wander.” 

-Charles Foster, Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness 

The book talks about our relationship with time, with society, with music and dance and art, with brick buildings and trees and mountains, with the sky and the sea, with the animals and air. But mostly, it talks about our relationship with other people. Which makes me think—what a perfect book to keep me connected, in a way, to my grandma. 

“To be human: believe that you will endure.” 

And she has. She never touched this book, never even knew I bought it or read it in her backyard. But for the rest of my life, this paperback will be inextricably linked to that trip, the last time I held my grandma’s hand in this life, the time I said goodbye and thanked her for all the years of love. Simply for the fact that I was there, and so was she, and so was the book. And the memory of it…that’s what endures. 

We are more than these mortal bodies—that’s one of the ideas explored in this book—an idea I think more and more people are starting to realize. It's a concept that has been keeping humanity going, fueling art and plays and books and music for thousands of years, and has been put into words far more eloquently than I could attempt to here. 

But I encourage you to take a moment and think about that fact, that you live and exist in the memories of everyone you love, everyone who has ever loved you. And if they remember, and their children, and their children, then a part of you will live on, too. It’s Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. It’s portraiture hanging on the walls of the MET. It’s giving your mother’s name to your daughter, even if it's just in the middle. It's turning the last page and remembering your grandma when you unexpectedly finish a book on the downtown C. 

Maybe that’s what it is to be human, after all. 

Maybe.

(But then again, what do I know?)