The Nowness of Everything
On March 15th 1994, 18 years ago today, playwright Dennis Potter gave what he predicted (and what turned out to be) his last ever television interview to Melvyn Bragg. One month before, Potter had learned he had terminal cancer of the pancreas and liver. He was in great pain and sipped morphine from a hip flask during the interview, all the while smoking cigarettes held between fingers clenched by psoriasis and arthritis.
Amidst the discourse about his life and his work there came a part – a short monologue – on his outlook knowing his life was nearly over…
This worldview, all at once poetic yet pragmatic, always positive and never pitying, was more remarkable in light of the fact Potter was nursing his wife through her own cancer battle while living with the physical challenges of his illness.
Within two months of the interview, both Dennis Potter and his wife had succumbed to their cancers.
Melvyn Bragg recounted the interview in a documentary this week and described, with teary eyes, how remarkable the words were from this frail but fiery man. I watched it completely entranced. It simultaneously brought a huge smile to my face while causing that familiar knot in my chest. I realised that for many of us, myself included, such clarity of thought and awareness of being is seldom felt.
I wanted to share Dennis Potter’s words with you and I hope you share them too.
Thanks for sharing, they give everyone something to think about.
I lost a friend a couple of weeks ago. She was only 51 and it was very sudden. Since then, I have been trying to live by the phrase ‘Today is the only day of your life. Act accordingly’.
I’m writing this with tears streaming down my face, having just watched the footage above. How utterly marvellous, and right, he was. What a remarkable man.
Thank you for sharing this. I’ve never seen it before but I will be watching it again as I try very hard to live in the present.
Having been through my own battle with the big C this is exactly the sort of video I need to see – thanks Gary. I am also going to show it to my husband. You just cannot assume that you can start appreciating and doing things in 17 years time when you (might) retire. You just can’t.
Philip Gould expressed some similar wisdoms a couple of weeks before he died and I shall always remember a 15-year-old girl with terminal cancer who said that, since she faced up to death, the grass is greener, the sky bluer, human faces more beautiful. I’ve always hoped I would have the privilege (and courage) of remembering this when my time comes for without the imminence of death to remind us of our transience, it’s too easy to forget. By the way, one of the things I love about gardening is that every tiny detail – every emerging bud, every changing leaf – is observed and cherished and that much of it is based on patient hopefulness – seed-sowing, sapling-planting etc for a future we may not be there to see.
Wow – powerful stuff and he is so so so right.
I miss those days when you could literally notice everything because your head was so clear and vivid.
Aaron brings me back to the now-ness of things.
He’ll notice the tiniest detail on something because his head is free of expectations or clutter.
Thank you for bringing us into the now. Even writing this I am adjusting the way I am sitting and breathing more deeply as I am now in the now………….
in a week spent waiting for news about the imminent passing of the young-ish father of our 16-year-old friend–all the while asking myself some hard questions about taking on some diagnostic testing of my own–this share was a welcome reminder of the blessing that we all have before us: today.
i was utterly unfamiliar with mr. potter before today, so thank you, too, for giving me another writer with whom to connect.
Wise words.
My best friend died of cancer when we were 23. One of the last times I saw her, she commented how she felt really lucky, because she saw the stress we were all going through, trying to build careers and establish our lives and worrying about buying houses, having children etc. Whereas she knew *exactly* what was going to happen to her, and pretty much when, and so all she had to do was make the most of each day. I’ve never forgotten her words – or courage. It was a jaw-dropping revelation to me, at that age.
Such wise words. We must remember that none of us has the future until it becomes our present.
Sorry to pimp out another site, but the questions on here have helped me focus on the right things and live in the here and now more than anything else I’ve read:
http://www.thehappyself.com/50-questions-that-will-free-your-mind
Beautiful piece xx
I come face to face with what cancer does to people on a daily basis in my work and the one thing that is noticiable is a thirst for life, a positivity unknown in so many peoples lives. It is through this work that I have met some of the most inspirational people and it has grounded me no end. You could say I have found that awareness of being, the need to find the positive in every situation, the courage to do the things that I once thought were out of my reach and the enthusiasum for life just the way it is. Life is for living, we only get one chance at it and I plan to make the most of it
Thanks for reminding me why I am lucky x
Forgot to tell you I linked to this on my FB page for everyone to see. Loved it. So, so poignant and true and bloody well worth remembering.