Earl called back. Earl is 86-years old WWII vet with a failing health. I am not sure how much longer Earl will live. In fact, I was afraid that I missed his passing while I was in Korea. My thoughts drifted while I was listening to Earl's frail voice on the phone. What draws me to him? Why do I insist in checking in with a man with a shadow of death cast on him as long as he is old. Was it pity? Was it obligation? Was it my Christian sense of compassion? It was none of those things, at least they are not the main reason. Earl, whom I did a short documentary film about a few years back for a classroom project, had a perspective on life that one seldom encounter. I realized awhile ago just because you get older does not necessarily mean that you develop perspective about life. Life experiences do not make you understand and have perspective about life, it is the kind of experiences and the frame of reference that organizes and interprets them that gives it meaning. And for one reason or another, Earl has perspective, a rarer commodity that's like an existential lazy-boy that allows you to put your feet up and trust in its sturdiness. I know Earl's life's perspective to be true. Not truth with a capital - T, but true in the way that it has been lived rightly, at least latter part of his life. Earl is not perfect by any means. He's been through a divorce, estranged from his children, and lives a relatively lonely life with an old boxer in what he calls a "dirty hovel." However, he lives his life patched, weaved, and held together by grace. To know that Earl still with us is like ....
