Do Not Say Too Late

My Buddhist teacher Shunryu Suzuki once wrote calligraphy, in English, that read, “Do not say too late.” He gave this to Yvonne, one of his main disciples, who had it on the wall in her living room for her whole life. I saw it there for years whenever I visited her. I’m not sure why he wrote the calligraphy, or if it had any direct relevance to something that was going on in Yvonne’s life. Maybe she had told Suzuki about something that she felt was too late to change, and he wrote the scroll in response. But it was such an unusual phrase, it has stuck in my mind for these 50 years. And now, on New Year’s Eve 2021, on the cusp of a new year where so much darkness has descended on our world on so many levels, the phrase has come back to me. “Do not say too late”– a suggestion to find hope even when hope is in short supply.

How many times in our life, in so many situations, do we say, or think, “Well, it’s too late. It’s over. Nothing can be done.” Certainly, that can happen in a marriage, a partnership, or any relationship. Occasionally “it’s over” does represent the truth of a situation. But more often, there are more chances, if only we know where to look. I was just reading the biography of Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman and who was paralyzed from the neck down in a terrible horseback riding accident. He writes that in the first days and weeks after the accident, when he was still in shock, and unable to breathe without machines, he thought, “Well it’s over. There’s no point going on. I should just check out.” One night, as he was lying in the dark in his hospital room, a man in hospital scrubs burst in, speaking in a strong Russian accent, and introduced himself as Dr. So-and-So, renowned proctologist, there to give him a rectal exam. It was Reeve’s good friend, Robin Williams, reprising a character from one of his comic sketches. Williams’ comic character, outrageous the way his improvised routines often were, made Reeve laugh for the first time since his accident. “Do not say too late”: Robin Williams, in his own manic way, gave Reeve that gift. Reeve could go on, and did. In time he discovered what medicine now calls the “Christopher Reeve effect”—the ability for a paralyzed person to regain significant mobility through intensive exercise and therapy. Until Reeve demonstrated that, no doctor thought that was possible. Reeve was able to turn a terrible twist of fate into a gift for all mankind, through his perseverance and hard work.

We cannot all be Christopher Reeve, but we can see him as an inspiration and beacon for the circumstances of our own lives. Both at an individual and societal level, we need to commit to never saying “too late.” This is especially true for men; my good friend Jed Diamond has documented that the suicide rate for middle-aged and older men is 1.6 times that of women. The causes behind that statistic are complex, surely. But whatever the reasons, men especially need to remember Christopher Reeve– not just a man, but Superman– and the way he was able to pick himself up from tragedy and go on.

I read recently that in Afghanistan, the situation is so grave that fathers are selling a child simply to acquire enough money to prevent the rest of the family and their other children from starving to death. We may think that in America things have taken a dark turn, and perhaps they have. But we should never forget that in many parts of the world the suffering people experience is immeasurably worse. A planetary view is useful in helping us to put our own travails into perspective. We are entering the third year of a terrible pandemic, yes; but I read recently that in the Middle Ages, during the Black Plague, in the Italian city of Sienna more than half its citizens died. Human beings, when pressed to the limit, have an enormous capacity to endure and recover from catastrophe. This is a fact we should never forget.

“Do not say too late”: a lesson to remember as we begin 2022 with new resolve to find new light where we can.