It was the kind of careless thing that gets said when you
think the said thing will never amount anything. Like election campaign gusto,
no one is going to fact check so you might as well sound self-assured as
possible. This was idle conversation at a bar and would never be remembered if
it wasn’t so hard for me to forget.
It was my birthday and we had just finished another day long
drink fest following an evening of same. Today’s event was a fundraiser,
something called Beers for Beasts,
held by a local craft brewery. Brewed were dozens of special-batch beers and
you’d have access to them for a price. The proceeds went to a charity protecting
abused or neglected animals. At
mid-thirty this is how I have been reduced to caring about and caring for the
world. Paying a small sum that comes
paired with small gratification (see: beer, craft).
We were carrying on when we came to discussion of my wife’s
family. It was a sorting of who was who,
how many sisters, how we spend holidays, an accounting of where people lived. I’ve known my wife’s younger sister since she
was nine. In a lot of ways we are as
close as siblings by blood (my own sister is just two years my junior). I am
certainly more protective of my youngest sister-in-law. We mentioned that her youngest sister had a
boyfriend named Ravi and when asked if I liked him I said, “Yes of course. He’s
a little naïve though.”
+++
Ravi and I probably
spent a cumulative 100 hours together.
He is a fantastic listener, which is an odd thing for a man his
age. When we lost him to the sea in
Costa Rica he was a long 19 years, and had the sort of intelligence and
confidence you would expect to translate into mouth-running. Not so. During our too few conversations the
role of motor mouthed know-it-all was left to me. Desperately seeking to prove my age,
experience, and tout-le-monde savvy that comes with being a happy well-adjusted
adult.
Ravi reminded me of myself at that age, or rather, what I
wish I was at that age. He worked hard
at foreign language. He was an EMT at
school, and at home. He didn’t just want
to be a doctor. He wanted to be a doctor that helped the poorest of the
poor. He wanted to re-invent medicine by
understanding every aspect of it.
While he was with us I found his ambition and hope
exhausting, and this completely embarrasses me.
Ravi looked for opportunities to stand up for what he wanted and
believed in; I spend almost all my time now looking for a place to sit down.
And I think I keep a pretty good pace for a person my
age. I work 50 hours a week reshaping energy
consumption to what I sincerely believe the only way forward. I fight heart disease and alcoholism -- in myself
-- by exercising 15 hours a week. I sit
on three boards, two clean energy industry boards and the board of our local
triathlon club. I am a member of the
Park Slope Food Coop; but only because my wife forces me.
And all of this makes me tired. I rarely make calls to family and friends
unless circumstance forces me. I am not
one for visits and I check email and twitter too much. I chalk up my 50 hours of clean energy work,
volunteer positions, and 60 miles of running a week to, “Enough. I’m tired.
Fuck off.”
How could one, anyone, keep this pace up? All this goddamned
thinking and doing.
+++
The last thing I remember Ravi sharing on facebook was
“Can’t believe I am officially a junior. Time goes by so fast.” In fact it does. The distance between yesterday and tomorrow
has shrunk. How do we find a way to capture this time? To slow it down and draw meaning from our
time, before saying next? How do we get
all the things done to make ourselves be the person we hope to be, without
missing the point of becoming that person?
I have been a vegetarian off and on, but mostly off, since I
was old enough to make the choice for myself.
The problem I have had in the last few years is how dang hard it seems.
How do you explain this to your family? What about thanksgiving? What about
protein? Isn’t it hard and inconvenient?
All this is bull shit, of course. We have so much food that this, the having of the too much food, is now
our number one health problem. Think
about this. Over all history we – humans
– have struggled to find enough food. I
mean, really struggled. Entire tribes,
whipped out from famine. Rwanda was a particular kind of evil, but at its core
it was about a bunch of people having resources, and another bunch not. Yet, the crisis we face today, in America at
least, is that we eat too much food, and too much terrible food. Cancer and heart disease, number two and
number one can be directly linked to our diets.
And yet, nearly all people wonder about my health when I disclose
that I am vegetarian. And this is the
real reason I have had trouble sticking to this commitment. I hate making other people feel
uncomfortable, and never more so than when they are uncomfortable with me.
+++
Ravi was lost vigorously trying to save a friend caught in a
current. You could make the argument
that, if he thought about himself just a little bit more then he might be with
us today. But then, he wouldn’t really
be with us, would he? Something like him
would be physically represented, sure, but him. Not the guy who made me think
at mid-thirty, “Am I doing this right?”
The real tragedy of losing someone so young, with so much
promise, is that there is a sense of hope unfulfilled. What would their kids have been? How would
his profession turned out? What a fine wedding that would be!
And these are all tremendously sad in the case of Ravi. He was a beloved friend, who many, many, many
people counted on for advice, and laughter, and love. But what we gain from a life lived as well as
Ravi -- at a third of the way to 100 years I feel pretty safe in saying he
lived a fuller life than many people I know -- is the ability to make ourselves
better by spreading pieces of him across the planet and across time.
And this is how I came to be a vegetarian for good. Ravi was a committed vegetarian who ate some
fish and was careful to state that’d he’d eat some meat for invited meals when
there was no other option. This meant
that at every meal he had a chance to think about what he was eating and what
that food meant to the people and place around him. He never backed away. He explained it without making you feel bad
about yourself, and without compromising his choice.
Yes, it can be exhausting to think forward, with so much
hope and gusto as Ravi did. But having
this personal monument, the choice of vegetarianism, helps me. I am vegetarian
for all the very good reasons I tried to be one before. And Ravi showed me how to get there.
I’ve never been healthier. I think it is making me and the
planet stronger. Feel free to call me a
little naïve.
