Nothing lasts — but that doesn't mean nothing is important — Richard Kyte

Deer lose their antlers every year between December and April, and hunting for the sheds is a favorite pastime for many people once the snow melts and before morel mushrooms begin springing up. If they are not collected within a few weeks of dropping to the ground, squirrels, porcupines, and mice make a meal of them, sharpening their teeth on the tines and ingesting valuable nutrients.

The antler I found had been lying there for at least a year. Everything protruding above the pine needles was chewed away, but what remained was still impressive. The main beam of an antler is the central stem from which the tines protrude, and this was the largest I had ever seen. It must have come from a massive buck.

The male whitetail deer in Wisconsin lives about three years. Given the size of the antler, the buck that produced it was probably 4 or 5 years old. He had already beaten the odds of survival. It is unlikely he is still roaming the same woods today.

Compared to whitetails, the human lifespan is vast, but it is still shorter than most of us would like. I wonder whether deer reflect upon their mortality. Probably not. That is a burden, or a gift, known to humans alone.

I held the antler in my hands, feeling what can only be described as reverence. I imagined that deer: proud, strong, vital. Yet, also doomed, as we all are, to be food for worms and insects and other animals.

We do our best to hide that fact from ourselves. Our funerals are elaborate pageants of deception, but the bare fact is that like the vegetables in our gardens, we are either green and growing or ripe and rotting. There is no permanence among us mortals. Our lives come and go like mist.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” says the book of Ecclesiastes. “There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.”

In 17th century Europe, there developed a tradition of depicting the human predicament of mortality in painting. The paintings, known as “vanitas,” would typically be some form of still life depicting skull alongside a variety of items: an hourglass, a candle, a sheet of music, a violin, some flowers. Sometimes artists would paint arrangements of fruit or flowers by themselves, with just few showing signs of decay or with insects crawling upon their surface.

The human capacity for reverence arises out of our capacity for appreciating the full beauty and richness of life alongside its brevity. Take nothing for granted. Every moment is precious. This day, this hour, will not last and it will not come again.

“Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods,” writes Emerson. The eternal is always there, just out of reach, obscured by our preoccupations and distractions.

When we deceive ourselves about the fragility and brevity of life, we put our focus and our energies into the wrong things. We tend to prioritize convenience over relationships and accumulation over wisdom.

We need to nurture reverence in ourselves because it allows us to observe our natural limitations. This is the heart of ethics, to place boundaries on our own ambitions. Even though I can tell a lie, I will not, because it transgresses upon another’s right of self-determination. Even though I can force another person to do something, I will not, because that is theirs to decide.

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe the more often and steadily we reflect upon them,” writes Immanuel Kant, “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

All injustice arises out of a failure of reverence, a failure to acknowledge that life is a gift that comes with strings attached. What we do to people matters, and I should never do to someone else what I would not want done to me. That is a truth that rises above the abstract calculations of costs and benefits.

I will give this decayed antler a prominent place on the mantle, to remind me of the vanity of my pursuits. This column, which causes me so much anxiety and struggle every week, will be read by a few and forgotten. The kitchen countertops, which were so much work to replace, will be torn out by the next owner of the house.

Nothing lasts. But that doesn’t mean nothing is important. Truth is important. And kindness. And respect for every life — those I know and those I will never meet.

People are real, and what we do to them matters. That is a fact that rises into prominence whenever we act out of reverence.