If you ain't first, you're last. – Ricky Bobby/Teshale
Apologies for the extreme lateness of this post but somehow it fits the subject matter. So I’ll pretend it was for dramatic effect and not the more mundane, inexplicable realities.
Teshale is right: we, as a culture, are obsessed with firsts. First kisses, first dates, first past the post, Who's on first, the list goes on and on. But, as with so many things, our fascination is misplaced. Firsts are a curiosity, often, though certainly not always, memorable more for the novelty than the significance. Blasphemy, you say! But it’s all relative. And relative to lasts, firsts are noticeably lower on the ladder.
Every journey has a start and a finish, but it isn’t the first step that endures, it’s the last step. Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon sticks in the popular consciousness as one of the grandest technical achievements in human history, yet it is Eugene Cernan’s final step on the moon that reminds us of the true significance we attached to those feats (just enough to never build upon them in any way). Lasts allow for introspection and evaluation; indeed, they demand it. By the time a last rolls around there is space enough to gain a little perspective on the path. Firsts are exciting because the path remains undefined, an infinite well of possibility. But lasts are important because with maturity comes thoughtfulness, and reflections on the pitfalls and twists of the path are more valuable than youthful pontifications on the possibilities.
One day not so long ago I was walking along in the wee hours of the morning. Up ahead the ground sloped upward with buildings, mostly apartments, rising off in the distance. But I knew that gentle slope led to the bluffs that ringed the edge of the peninsula on which I live; though I couldn’t see it, beyond them was the ocean. For some reason, I took comfort in knowing that I was on a peninsula and that ultimately it had an end. The sensation of an ecumenopolis, a reasonable approximation of which is achieved by the expanse of Chicagoland even if it does border a Great Lake, unnerves me. The lack of finality, the endlessness of the expanse is a terrible thing. Without a clear end, what defines these cities or these societies?
Lasts provide what firsts cannot: closure and, if we’re very lucky, comfort. My last breath will be so much more significant than my first: taken with my express knowledge and my consent. It will close out the projects I’ve begun: the trivial, the momentous, and the memorable. And it will save me from the horrors of eternity. Don’t tell anyone but the only thing I fear more than death is immortality. The mind becomes weary ever so quickly.
What do we remember? Last suppers, the last of the Mohicans, the last man to die for a mistake, the last recorded Beatles album, the last (sort of) troops to leave a warzone. And what do we spend generations anticipating? Remember, it wasn’t the first atomic detonation that people truly feared, it was the last. And still today, though less fervently, we fear it.
Lasts are what separate the finite from the infinite; regrettably, firsts do not. And while the Infinite might first Let There Be Light, ultimately it is merely a way of measuring the finite. But that requires knowing and accepting there will be a last and, if we're brave, or desperate, or zen enough, embracing it.
