RIP, Leonard Nimoy

In case you haven’t heard, Leonard Nimoy has passed away.

Leonard Nimoy in 2011. Photo by Gage Skidmore

I’m not normally affected by celebrity passings, other than to offer a quick prayer. But his portrayal of Spock in The Wrath of Khan showed, to my childhood mind, the Platonic ideal of nobility and (if I’d had the word at the time) charity. It is one of the few movie scenes that actually changed the way I saw the world, and so formed my whole life. I am deeply grateful for that performance.

I don’t follow the private lives of actors. I don’t want their real world lives to impinge on the characters they portray. So I know next to nothing about Nimoy, the man. Since I don’t usually connect to actors in a personal way, it surprises me that his death brings me to tears. After all, Spock has not died. Nimoy’s death is no more and no less tragic than any other man’s. To paraphrase Donne, his bell tolls for me and for thee. But because his art impacted me so deeply, I feel it more deeply.

I suppose that is the purpose of art: to create a work that allows others to see the world more clearly, and to experience the truth viscerally. Nimoy’s work, in collaboration with his writers and directors, did exactly that for me. And I believe that he could not have played a character of such virtue so compellingly without having some experience and practice of virtue in his own life.

I have read that Nimoy was a believing Jew, who took his faith and heritage increasingly seriously as his life progressed. I am a Catholic, who believes that God loves all people of any religion or none, but that He has a special care for the Jewish people. I hope no one minds if I offer the traditional Catholic prayers for the repose of his soul.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God,
rest in peace.
Amen.

Lifestyle, personality, character

My cousin, who is literally (1) half my age, just articulated a profound insight.

She said, “People think their lifestyles are their personalities. But they aren’t.”

Indeed. What we do for recreation and the manner in which we live are significant. Aristotle acknowledged that

On Commitment

Over the weekend, some friends and I swapped stories of sordid debauchery. One friend, let’s call him “Larry” to protect his delicate and pristine reputation, told a tale of a drunken night out with his friend “Pete” – whose reputation is otherwise unknown to me, but I’ll presume he’s an upstanding and law-abiding contributor to the common good and not sully his good name either.

The early evening, Larry told me, included such features as experiments with Absinthe, pedicabs, serial amnesic flirtations, and a quest for the diviest of dive bars. The end of the night included taking peppermint schnapps from a stranger at a bus stop. (Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to take candy from strangers?)

A view without a room

But the bit that really caught my attention was this: sometime around one in the morning, Larry and Pete wandered through the Seattle Center. They found themselves near the base of the Space Needle, staring upward into the overcast skies for which the Pacific Northwest is justly famous. It seemed to Pete that this plot of grass was a most excellent place to lie down, perhaps in hopes of a less rotational view of the sky. He did so gracefully, I am certain.

Larry, being a gentleman if not exactly a scholar, noted that the buses ran few and far between at that hour of night. He suggested that a choice presented itself to them. “Either,” said he, “we run for the bus right now, or we commit to sleeping on the grass the rest of the night.”

“Oh, I’m committed,” said Pete. “I’m committed.”

So Larry lay down next to his friend and reflected upon the sky.

The cost of commitment

In blockbuster action movies, the hero at some point fights the villain. Usually, the hero is outmatched, whether in numbers or in strength or in intelligence. The villain presses his advantage, beats down the hero, and considers himself victorious. But the hero refuses to stay down, refuses to give up. Pain and injury don’t matter. The stakes are too high. The hero is committed to saving the world, and will sacrifice everything else, even his life, to achieve that goal. This commitment – usually accompanied by a healthy disregard of physics – allows the hero to overcome the villain in the end.

The point has been made more domestically, as well. Commitment reveals values, especially ultimate values. Your level of commitment is exactly equal to the degree of sacrifice you are willing to make to protect your value or to achieve your goal.

As my friends Larry and Pete lay on the grass contemplating the sky, that same sky returned their regard and gave them that most precious of gifts: water. Despite Pete’s words of commitment, he found that gift unwelcome. Apparently, gazing upon the heavens was not so high a priority for him as remaining dry. So Larry helped him to his feet and they staggered off in search of shelter.

I find a similar temptation to set comfort and ease as my highest value. But I know that I am called to a majestic vision – or at least an entertaining one. This is why I write fiction, after all. I certainly demand that my characters make life-changing commitments and stick to them even when it challenges their comfort, safety, and loves. It is only fair that I make a similar commitment to my work of writing, and regard the distractions which keep me from the keyboard as enemies to be overcome. Pain and injury are nothing compared to the loss of the stories I never get around to writing.