n January of 1987, Senator Paul Tsonga of my home state of Massachusetts announced that he would retire from the Senate and not stand for reelection that year. Tsonga was a rising star, an overwhelming favorite to be reelected, frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for Vice President or even President. A few weeks before his announcement, he had learned that he had a form of lymphatic cancer which could not be cured but could be treated and would probably not affect his physical abilities or his life expectancy. The illness did not force Paul Tsonga out of the Senate, but it did force him to confront the fact that he would not be around forever. He would not be able to do everything he might want to, so what were the things that he most wanted to do in the limited time that he had? Most of us manage to avoid that question; Paul Tsonga, waiting for word from his doctor, had to face up to it. He decided that what he wanted most in life, what he would not give up if he could not have everything, was being with his family and watching his children grow up. He would rather do that than shape the country’s laws or get his name in the history books. He understood that if he was to have any sort of immortality, any sort of life beyond his years on earth, it would be rooted in that, not in his legislative accomplishments.

After he made his decision known, a friend wrote to congratulate him on having his priorities straight, adding, “Nobody on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’” And of course, Ecclesiastes, who was haunted by the same fear that there would not be enough time to do it all, said it first: “Go eat your bread in gladness and drink your wine in joy… Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the fleeting days of life that have been granted you…” Paul Tsonga was forty-three years old when he made his decision. (…)

The philosopher Horace Kallen marked his seventy-third birthday by writing, “there are persons who shape their lives by the fear of death, and persons who shape their lives by the joy and satisfaction of life. The former live dying; the latter die living. I know that fate may stop me tomorrow, but death is an irrelevant contingency. Whenever it comes, I intend to die living.”