Life's Progress Into Death

We make our brief appearance, we practise our lines, act out our part, and exit stage left. We do it, the birds do it, the bees do it, trees do it, all manner of life upon this earth embark upon life and encounter that final horizon. What lies beyond the horizon is anyone's guess, but most or perhaps many people accept that there is quite simply put nothing there. The journey takes us to a void, a completion beyond which what we once were ceases to exist. We retreat from youth and advance to death.

This is the way of all living things. On a truly stellar scale the giant stars that blink in the night sky will eventually, over a prolonged and truly long period of time no longer exist. Their matter will be transformed, taken up by the process of ongoing life; atomic particles distributed in its many and still-unknown forms. It's said by scientific authority that the infinitely minuscule, powerfully-microscopic matter of which we are all formed once lived in another form so in that sense we have much in common with the stars that live, flare out and die. We are of them.

When we are introduced into this world we are assisted along the way by loving parents whose seed come to fruition we represent. As living tabula rasa we consume knowledge that we are constantly bombarded with in exposure to life upon this earth at a rapid pace, our nimble brains storing information, recognition and memories. This is a process we are little aware of at this level; we focus on inter-personal matters, our emotions, our place in the small universe of family and society.

As young people the slow and steady approach to personal extinguishment is never in mind, although at some point we become aware that those of our families who have gone before, our grandparents, are old, look feeble and frail and are steeply descending life's trajectory while our own ascent confers the sure knowledge of invincibility upon us, fresh and young. Without our acknowledgement that we even recognize this we are prepared to accept that the inevitable happens - to others, to the elderly, the ill, the unfortunate others.

In middle age reality intrudes as we admit to ourselves that our future while still looking down upon us, also includes a decline we could not until then attribute to our failing vitality, our resolute physical march to decline. Anything resembling age becomes anathema to us, a certain indication that we are becoming our parents, our grandparents, leaving behind the bright promise of youth; we are what we always denied: friable; life-expendable.

We waste precious time urging ourselves to continue regarding ourselves as young, spend countless hours practising a sad deceit upon our physical selves. All the while dreading the real knowledge we have acquired, that our physical presence is finite and we are steadily advancing toward that no-turning-back event. Time becomes our enemy. We bemoan its passage, dread its annual reminders of another year's birth-anniversary. What was once celebrated is now a matter of funereal observation.

We should be, in fact, celebrating all the years that we have experienced as having lived a great adventure. Which is what life really is, an adventure into the unknown for each of us, with endless roads to be taken, countless possibilities, some disappointments, but far more satisfactions. Even our physical persona, our ageing selves, our grey hair, lined faces, failing bodies don't really stop us from experiencing because our minds are there, ready and eager to be entertained and challenged, absorbed and interested in fresh realities.

Age needn't mean we stop being interested in launching ourselves into new areas of opportunity, or learning situations, or social and cultural theatres of expression. We've more than ample company in the community of the ageing and aged. In fact, the same opportunities that we were exposed to as social creatures when we were young face us now, only now we've had the good fortune of having acquired knowledge through our previous experiences and we have the potential of making more of these new opportunities.

Value what we have, whatever it is, and not simply sit back and rely on memories to enrich what's left of our lives. Live to live, to extract from this very popular experience whatever we can derive from our progress on that too-short road. Thrive on the privilege of life's journey.

The rest will take care of itself.