Keeping A Gentle Grasp

Om Mani Padme Hum - In Memory of Stephen V Smith

This time last year, I was hiking the Annapurna Trail in Nepal on a trip with a friend and his closest friends and family. It was billed as a 'spiritual, one-in-a-lifetime, awe-inspiring trek'’ Om Mani Padme Hum was everywhere.

It was a wonderful trip but also challenging. Most of all because one member of our group did not make it to the end.

We know that all these professional/company building/asset allocation decisions we make are a game. That’s why it’s measured with money, interest rates, etc. It's competitive. It's important, yes, but 'winning' is not the most important feature. 

For investing and for living, your most valuable asset is time. 

One of the themes of this newsletter is it’s all personal. The actions people take. The things that are important to them. The events and memories that are meaningful.

On Day 8 of our trek in Nepal, Stevie, one of my new best friends and father to my friend, had a heart attack on the trail and passed. One minute he was with us, laughing, joking, and taking pictures; moments later, his heart had stopped. He was there with two of his children in one of the most beautiful settings in the world, loving every minute of it. 

My friends knew their father, a retired episcopal minister, would have deeply appreciated a Buddhist cremation beside the river, in the shadow of the mountain, and for us to finish the trek. And that is what we did, spreading Stevie's ashes on the top of the Thorong La Pass at 18,000 feet two days later. 

We know that death is an inevitability, yet the finality might always feel shocking when it happens.

Stevie had joined the Declarative Statements community only a few days prior. 

I had been added to his email list only five days before he passed. I was excited to receive his periodic reflections. I liked how he would thank the Lord for the great experiences of life, like tasting his daughter's organic peaches: 'I take no small comfort in the fact that when a donut peach or a red haven explodes in my mouth, and drips down my chin, and transports me to a singular state of bliss, I am in the presence of the Almighty.' And that he signed off with 'blessings.' 

It took only a few days into the trip for me to send Stevie a reflection I wrote on Burning Man in the context of our talking about modern religion and spirituality. And in response, he wrote,

"Burning oneself down is a rich archetype and a central part of the mystical tradition of all faiths from time immemorial. Personal identity is no more than a construct, as ephemeral as my next breath, and to face this in ourselves takes great courage and determination, even and especially in my ripe old age. God willing, I will get to Burning Man someday, but for the moment, let us keep a gentle grasp on this fleeting life for the gift that it is."

Stevie was deeply thoughtful like that. And caring and eternally optimistic. I am grateful that I met him and became friends in his last days. 

Colleen and I spent the night at the hotel in Kathmandu after we finished the trek. Stevie was supposed to be with us, but Colleen had changed her flight to leave early. She was gone when I woke up but had left a note and a book, “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” by Sogyal Rinpoche (a Tibetan lama), on my bedside table.

An Autobiography in Five Chapters:

1.) I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I fall in.

I am lost…I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2.) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I pretend I don’t see it

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I am in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

3.) I walk down the same street. 

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it is there.

I still fall in…it’s a habit

My eyes are open

I know where I am

It is my fault

I get out immediately

4.) I walk down the same street

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I walk around it.

5.) I walk down another street. 

The purpose of reflecting on death is to make a real change in the depths of your heart, and to come to learn how to avoid “the hole in the sidewalk” and how to “walk down another street”. Often this will require a period of retreat and deep contemplation, because only that can truly open our eyes to what we are doing with our lives.

Since this experience, I frequently ask myself: What will I do to keep a gentle grasp on this fleeting life for the gift that it is?  

Published in Declarative Statements w.66 ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’