My Own End Horizon by Richard Lehan

On the cusp of my 68th birthday, I underwent surgery to repair a hernia. This turn of events caught me off guard because I hadn’t recalled straining myself and experienced no pain from the condition. My primary care doctor called it an “inguinal” hernia and referred me to a surgeon to repair it. The surgeon explained that the hernia was the result of the intestine breaking through a weakened abdominal wall. But what caused the weakness? I asked. The wear and tear on your body, he responded matter-of-factly. The hernia was on the right side of my groin, but the surgeon also detected a weakness on my left side. That may also require shoring up, he warned me.

Not long after, I underwent laparoscopic surgery assisted by robotics, meaning the surgeon controlled the robotic surgical instruments from a console. After I was put under general anesthesia, small incisions were cut in the left and right sides of my abdomen and just above the belly button. From the latter incision point, a thin laparoscope outfitted with a video camera was inserted into my belly, which had been inflated with carbon dioxide gas to provide the surgeon with a three-dimensional view of my insides. By remotely maneuvering the robotic instruments, the surgeon pushed the escaped intestine back behind my right abdominal wall and reinforced it with a synthetic mesh. He implanted mesh in my left side abdominal wall as well.

In the end, the surgery proved to be a minimally invasive procedure with a relatively quick recovery time, for which I’m grateful. Since then, I’ve processed the experience from several different perspectives, sometimes simultaneously.

At first, I was taken by the innovative (at least to me) surgical approach to fixing the hernia: the assisting robot, the tiny camera probe snaked through my belly, the process of fortifying my abdominal walls with mesh. It was the seamless human-technological interface that impressed me. A tenet of personalism also came to mind: the distinction between a person being acted upon and acting through themselves. Undergoing surgery is a classic example of the former situation. The only “control” one has is to endure the experience—in my case, while sunk in a dreamless state of passivity. While necessary, it was unsettling to have my consciousness separated from my body. That indivisible unity is what makes one a person.                       

Next came the philosophical aftereffects. I pride myself on being fit for my age, but regardless of how visible the aging process is to me, the wear and tear of almost seven decades of existence serves as a timely reminder that I am mortal. I have an expiration date, not unlike the date stamped on a quart of milk, except that mine is unknown and subject to the unpredictable contingencies of being. My existence could end at any moment for a myriad of reasons. And, of course, my life in this world will end at some point; death is certain.

Hernia is derived from the Latin word herniae, meaning “rupture.” A hidden sign of my physical diminishment ruptured into view, spurring an episode of memento mori on my part. Latin for “remember you must die,” memento mori is a pillar of Stoic philosophy, a practice of allowing an ongoing awareness of your mortality to inform how you live each day. As Marcus Aurelius counseled, “Let each thing you would do, say, or intend be like that of a dying person.” Memento mori is also an important principle of Zen Buddhism. On a Zen retreat led by Roshi Robert E. Kennedy, S.J., in 2022, I joined the other retreatants in reciting the following “gatha” (short verse) on our first evening together:

Let me respectfully remind you
life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken, awaken.
Take heed, this night your days are diminished by one.
Do not squander your life.

But life finds ways to school us in death, independent of any intentional discipline. I’ve lost two siblings to untimely deaths and witnessed each parent’s moment of death. Recalling such losses is, in itself, a powerful expression of memento mori. And whenever I do so, my gaze naturally turns toward my own end horizon.

As a Christian, however, my philosophical reflection didn’t end there. I begin by recognizing that it’s not all about my individual fate. The physicist-theologian John Polkinghorne highlighted the need for a “thick” eschatology in the face of our place in an immense cosmos that will also die out eventually. In light of this reality, Christian believers must be capable of explaining the basis for their eschatological hope. The foundation of that hope is the Christ-event, the belief that the resurrection disclosed how the Story is unfolding and will end. As St. Paul said, if Jesus was not resurrected, then we are to be pitied for our false hope. Faith in the resurrection prompts us to “zoom out,” to take in the eschatological horizon. Only then does the entire Story become visible and meaningful, revealing what is ultimately in store for creation as a whole.

At the same time, the Christ-event injects a new theme to the Story: our individual and collective responsibility to further the (already unfolding) new creation in ways that reflect its divine origin and destiny. This latter imperative brings to mind Thomas Merton’s explication of Jesus’s dialogue with Nicodemus. In the preface to the Japanese edition of his book The New Man, Merton argues that when Jesus spoke of the need to be “born again,” or, in a more accurate translation, “born from above,” he regarded the first birth, of the body, as preparation for a second birth by means of the Spirit. That spiritual rebirth, Merton reminds us, is not a single event but requires a continuous dynamic of inner renewal that culminates in finding one’s true identity in God.

Jesus rebuked Nicodemus, the esteemed teacher, for his obtuseness. A religious sensibility that prizes the literal over the imaginative closes itself off to deeper spiritual truths. In contrast to Nicodemus, Merton cites the Japanese Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki as having a deep appreciation for the idea of the “birth of God” in humans as expressed by Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart. Though the birthing process is laborious, a transformed consciousness is gifted with a new and lasting orientation to the transcendent.

Alas, this is where the wear and tear accompanying aging comes into play. There’s a choice to be made in how to respond: continue to shore ourselves up on an ad hoc basis and hope the patch holds against the next sign of diminishment, or strive for nothing less than the spiritual rebirth called for by Jesus and turn every such sign into an oblation. Dinged up or not, I choose the latter. ♦

Richard Lehan is an essayist and short story writer living in Massachusetts. Three of his previous essays have appeared in Today’s American Catholic.

Image: Salwa / Unsplash