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Pushing the Envelope:
Eulogizing Icarus
© 2001 GT
<gt@dreamsmith.org>
Thoughts tumble through my head,
wanting to be expressed, but I never find the forum, or the moment,
or most of all the words. Then on some unrelated tangent, the right
image is seen, or the right story is heard, and everything falls into
place. Ideas and insights and feelings and emotions suddenly voice
themselves through the image before me, and I can finally do that
almost impossible thing: say what it is I feel.
I recently engaged in some lengthy
correspondence with someone interested in technology and
spirituality. Perhaps in response to this, while surfing the web in
my usual free-association style, I found myself at a site discussing
the relation between soul and spirit and technology. The author was
starting to sound like he was striking an anti-technological pose
with an example, but went on to point out that his example was not
about the use but abuse of technology, and that Daedalus was the
archetypical technologist, who used it wisely. He then brought
forward Icarus as another example of the abuse of technology.
In case you're not familiar with the
story, Daedalus was the inventor of many things, such as the potter's
wheel, the compass, and the saw. The famous story involves his
escape from Crete with his son, Icarus. He invents flight,
fabricating pairs of wings for himself and his son, using wax to hold
on the many feathers his wings require. He and his son fly off, but
Icarus sees the sun and decides to see how close he can fly to it.
The wax melts, and Icarus plunges to his death. The moral of the
story is supposed to be the wisdom of moderation, of not going to
extremes.
It was in reaction to this story that
I found the words for the feelings that have been tumbling around
inside me since Dale Earnhardt hit the wall during the final lap of
the Daytona 500, a little over three months ago. I had just recently
submitted The Call of Speed to a writing workshop at school, so I had
racing on my mind, including what motivates people to risk their
lives for the sport. Everyone said it was such a tragedy, and in a
way it was. It was a tragedy for the fans and NASCAR and the
Earnhardt family. A tragedy for America and the world to have lost a
hero. It was a tragedy for everyone -- everyone except Dale
Earnhardt.
The feeling I was so afraid to give
voice to, especially around anyone who felt it was a loss, was the
feeling that somehow Dale Earnhardt was one of the luckiest people to
have lived, and that he was lucky to have died the way he did.
Somehow, it seemed more fitting. It
was easier to think of him blazing down the track, doing what he
loved, right up to the moment he died, than to think of him dying in
some hospital or nursing home of cancer or heart disease or just
plain old age some thirty odd years from now. He got to do what he
loved, right up to the moment he died.
How thoughtless! How cruel! What a
terrible thing to say! The man was only 49 years old! He had a
great deal of life ahead of him! How dare I suggest he was somehow
better off having his life cut so short? Was my own fear of growing
old so strong that I relished the idea of dying young?
No, that wasn't it. But
I wasn't sure what it was. I did have a vague notion that if I lived to be
a hundred, my life would still be shorter in some important way than
Dale Earnhardt's. That he hadn't simply lived for 49 years, rather that for
49 years, he'd lived. Could I say the same about the years that I've
been alive?
In
the tale of Icarus, I finally saw what it was that I admire in him,
and I saw the way in which Icarus was wise, and Daedalus the fool.
Daedalus invented a wonderful tool, but it was Icarus who took it to
its limits. Icarus pushed the envelope, a mythical analog to a real
man almost as legendary and archetypical: Chuck Yeager. The mythical
Icarus and the real Yeager were heroes. They pushed the envelope,
discovered where the limits are, while the more timid were content to
fly the safe course. Yeager lived, but many other test pilots did
not. Were those who didn't live fools simply because they didn't
make it? Is that all that separates heroes from fools: whether they
survive?
Bah! We're the fools if we think
that.
Of course, Earnhardt wasn't pioneering
new aviation technology, advancing the state of the art. But on a
more personal level, he certainly pushed the envelope. As so many
others do, every day, largely unnoticed. Last week, I saw high
school students risking their lives for a pole vaulting competition.
Granted, the risk is nowhere near as great, but pole vaulting has
claimed the lives of a couple dozen students over the last decade.
Although falling out of a second story window isn't necessarily
fatal, it can be, and yet here were young people purposefully
flinging themselves that high in the air -- the higher the better. I
watched one ninth grade girl score a personal best on that day, and I
realized she was doing something I never do, and don't know if I
could. She was pushing the envelope.
Maybe not like Yeager. No world
records were set in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota that day. But it was her
personal best; it was a first and a world record for her. She was
pushing the limits of her envelope, and expanding those limits in the
process.
It's the spirit of Icarus that these
people all share, and that spirit is something to be admired, not
ridiculed. These are people who push the envelope, some as a hobby
or sport, some as a job, but whatever the pursuit, they push it to
the limits. They go beyond what's safe. Are they fools, for risking
their lives this way? Or are we the fools for not?
Icarus died, but his spirit has been
reborn a million times over. Sometimes it lives in these people for
a long time, and sometimes not, for their lives are cut short, as his
was. But the spirit survives and lives on, regardless. And of all
the spirits, there are few more admirable than the spirit of Icarus.
So once again, we bid farewell to
another incarnation of Icarus, who died like his predecessor, pushing
the envelope, pushing things to his limits, and just a little bit
more if he could. We can regret that we will never see him in
victory lane again, but we cannot call anything about his life a
tragedy. Unlike most of us, he actually lived
his life, rather than just hanging around in the world of the living.
His spirit was the kind that sometimes doesn't hang around long, but
it always returns. Icarus died, but his spirit endures. The lives
may be short, but their spirit is eternal.
Goodbye,
Icarus, until we meet again...
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