> > Seems to me you're reading a lot into a short obituary. How do you know they "poured their lives into this cake pan"? How do you they didn't love each other? All you know of this man is what the writer of the obits chose to say about him.
>
> I do admit I assumed too much in to his life and I was probably wrong-but the obituary didn't mention anything about his life aside from the cake pan. It seems as though if there was something else major in his life the obit would have mentioned it.

Grishny's point was mine as well, but I could go a step further. So let's say that the obituary writer wasn't just lazy and did, in fact, write what he or she felt this person contributed to life the most. That's still one person's perspective, and in all likelihood someone who didn't even know the guy.

So let's say he loved his wife and devoted his life to loving her, nurturing her, protecting her, and fulfilling all of her needs. If true, ok, maybe this guy's most profound impact on *my* life is the invention of this cake pan, but just because he did not impact me (or you, or the obituary writer) more profoundly doesn't mean his life was not every bit as noble and honorable and respectable as the 19-year-old who sacrificed his life so that his comrades could live.

One of the great matters of the human condition that constantly lures me to contemplation is how closed we are to each other, thanks to our utter inability to communicate experience and perspective to each other. Here we are in the age of information. For the first time in human history, we can click a couple of buttons and connect to the largest information source the world has ever known. Yet, how much do we still say, and consider it wisdom, that you can't truly understand an experience unless you've been through it before? You can't truly know what it's like to be a prisoner of war, to be a rape victim, to lose a twin, to be the object of prejudice, to be homeless on the street without anyone to turn to. You can't know what it's like to be loved by a faithful spouse of many decades, to witness the birth of your child, to watch the generations that follow you grow up and come into their own. You can always listen to what other people say and imagine, but you can't *really* know unless you've been through it before.

There is a world of experience out there, just beyond our grasp. Go downtown somewhere -- anywhere, even a small town -- and see how many people you can see at once. Look at the sidewalks, in passing cars, in shop windows. Chances are, even in a small town, you can see a hundred or two at once. Now take that number and multiply it by the volume of experiences you've had in your own life. Even if you're young, even if you've grown up in a stable home and have most of life's great experiences still ahead of you, that's a lot. You have passions, loves, fears, weaknesses, talents, and failings. You've been, at various times, inspired, thrilled, disappointed, enraged, afraid, selfish, selfless, and silly. You know yourself better than anybody, and yet you're still not done learning about yourself. Consider how much of you nobody else knows, or knows as well. Multiply all that by the number of people you see on that street, and consider how great the breadth and depth of human experience that's within your grasp, yet you'll never know or understand any of it.

I'm coming to a point. If you're an obituary writer, or, heck, even if you're a lifelong spouse -- what justice do you think can be done to memorialize a human life in a few dozen words? Even in a million words, what chance is there that the fulness of a human life can bring anyone to a complete understanding? The great observation here is not that the cake pan inventor was done an injustice by the brevity of his obituary and the inadequacy of words, but that so also was the marine done the same injustice.

Not everyone is a hero of great renown. Most of us are not. Some of us would be but never find ourselves face-to-face with a suicide bomber. Are we not noble until our nobility finds an outlet for demonstration?

I think we're here to learn to love God (part of which is loving our fellow humankind), and that this will ultimately be the sole measure of our life's worth that will endure beyond the passage of time. I do not wish to denigrate the heroism of this young marine, whose actions in the final moments of his life are greatly to be respected and demonstrate a compassion we should all aspire to. Yet what eternal meaning can we find in even this? His heroism affected an infinitesimal percentage of the world's population, within an infinitesimal slice of time in human history. Billions upon billions of people have lived and will live unaffected lives. The course of human events are probably not (and certainly not measurably) altered in any significant way. Will this act of heroism inherently impress the Almighty God, who created the world and understands completely each one of us who inhabit it?

But learn to know God, love God, and obey God (the natural sequence), which will result in fulfilling our places and purposes in life -- this is worthy of the greatest honor and nobility of all. Follow that path, and it may indeed lead us to the heroic neutralizing of a suicide bomber, or, perhaps, the heroic invention of a cake pan. Either way, the value in the ends is found in the means. A life following this path cannot possibly be thought a waste. No matter what the obituaries say.