It won’t all work out… and that’s okay but try while you can

There was a strange moment walking home this evening and hearing Tom Petty playing on my headset, the song was “It’ll All Work Out” — and there was this chilly melancholy feeling that suddenly hit me. This realization: I’m listening to the voice of a dead man. And with that thought, I felt that kind of cold that comes from the inside and makes you shiver a little, and your skin prickle.

I’m 48 and he was 66 when he passed on this month. So you think about it a little, maybe that’s all I’ve got left, eighteen autumns. That seems like not much and a lot at the same time.

So I’m thinking that maybe 48 is a long time. And a strange time. Because I’ve outlived people I thought would still be around.My bff, Michiel, passed away when she 30, from leukemia. My mentor and a second father to me, Detective Sekiguchi, passed away in 2007. If we live long enough, everyone we love is taken away from us.

I’m very happy my father, who is now 80, is alive and healthy and still doing autopsies. I think he’s the happiest coroner I know. Maybe there’s a modicum of joy of not being the guy on the slab. It’s a good job to remember every day that you are mortal too. In some ways, late in life, I’m also following in my father’s footsteps professionally.

I became a Zen Buddhist priest this year, on my 48th birthday, the same day that my mentor (方丈さん/禅師) became a Buddhist priest when he was 15 — on 1969 March 28th (昭和４４年３月２８日） — -the day I was born. It seemed like good timing. And of course, Zen Buddhism deals with death a lot in Japan. It’s the religion of funerals here — although Buddhist weddings might be making a comeback. One of my favorite Zen sayings was recently turned into a great joke.

Q: Why was the Buddhist coroner fired?

A: He kept putting down the cause of death as :“birth”

Back to ‘It’ll All Work Out’. The song is a b-side to a Tom Petty hit, I forget the hit but I remember the song. And I took a moment to really listen to the lyrics.

There were times apart, there were times together
I was pledged to her for worse or better
When it mattered most I let her down
That’s the way it goes, it’ll all work out

Now the wind is high and the rain is heavy
And the water’s rising in the levee
Still I think of her when the sun goes down
It never goes away, but it all works out

The lyrics are sparse and I didn’t get them years ago when I heard them. But one of the nice things about getting older (hopefully) is that you get a little wiser. When you’re young, you know can fuck up things, but it always seems like they can be fixed. You don’t understand that some things can’t be undone. Maybe even less so now where you can change plans with a text message, reach someone at almost anytime. There was a time when changing plans wasn’t easy nor was changing partners. If you said you were going to be somewhere, you had to be there. There was a time before cell-phones — and even beepers.

But when you’re younger, what you don’t really understand that when people need you, they need you right then, and if you let them down — you may never get a chance to resolve that. You can’t change the past. You can fuck things up so badly they can’t be fixed. So you want to exercise a little caution in the present. Especially in matters of love.

You can swipe to the right for the rest of your life but you the person you left behind may never come back. And you may regret that for years to come. You’ll never know, of course — whether it would have worked out. But you’ll know where you failed. So try to remember that quaint Japanese proverb:善は急げ (Hurry To Do Good). There’s not that many chances — as a friend or a lover or a brother. When it comes time to be there, to offer your help, try to not let people down.

I didn’t know Tom Petty as a person but I grew up with his music. And in this song, he seems to have left behind some wisdom. It won’t always work out — and often that’s due to things beyond our control. And that’s okay. But when it is within your power to do the right thing, do it. At least you won’t have regrets that come back again and again. So maybe think on this song, “when it matters most”. You might be happy you did.