Salvaging our ‘moments by which to matter’
May 3, 2010 by Steven Diamond
Filed under Daily Blog, Guest Bloggers, Jerry Davich
Robert Kurson lurked in the shadows of a meeting room inside a public library. The award-winning author and gifted wordsmith waited to speak to dozens of fans who showed up to now hear his words, too.
Kurson began his writing career as a features reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, then branched into magazine work before penning two best-seller books, “Shadow Divers” and “Crashing Through.”
Kurson quietly took a seat in front of the audience and disappeared in his work, his books, and stories of how he got to where he is today. He earned a philosophy degree from the University of Wisconsin, and another degree from Harvard Law School, before practicing real estate law and installing window blinds to make ends meet.
When he told family and friends he instead wanted to be a writer, they questioned his credibility, saying he didn’t write enough, he didn’t read enough, and he didn’t take any classes to do so. And they were right, he admits. But he had something more important on his side. His father, he says proudly, was “the single-best master storyteller.”
“It must have seeped into my pores,” he tells the crowd.
Kurson’s 2004 book “Shadow Divers” chronicles the aquatic quest for historical discoveries by single-minded deep-sea divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler.
The two foes-turned-friends became obsessed with a sunken German U-boat, 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey in the frigid depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The World War II vessel still housed the remains of its nameless crew.
Kurson not only documented the men’s quest, but also why they risked everything for it. Their marriages, their reputations, even their lives.
Both men agreed that their quest became “a moment by which to matter.”
It was their chance to do something special, something beautiful, and something true to themselves. Nothing else mattered. And nothing else should.
As such chances go, “some of us get it only once in our life if we’re lucky,” Kurson explains.
Not only did Chatterton and Kohler seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in their lives, so did Kurson in his life, by diving into writing as a livelihood.
“This is when I felt my first real connection with both of them,” Kurson says.
This connection would not only bind him to Chatterton and Kohler, but also to the realization that their legacies would hinge on their underwater obsession. For Kurson, his legacy would most likely hinge on his writing.
“What we do now,” the divers told Kurson, “is who we will be forever.”With this in mind, what are you doing in life that may define who you are forever? Maybe now is the time to find your sunken U-boat, figuratively speaking, to ponder the depths of its meaning, and to salvage your “moments by which to matter.”
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