Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Maybe...

A hazy shade of winter
ER — (archived)

It's about this time of life we start taking stock, evaluating our accomplishments and lamenting those things we never got around to. Mortality beckons, as "our springtime turns slowly into autumn". We wonder where the summer went. We still have time, but not as much as we used to, and none of us feels we've used the days alloted to us so far wisely.

Now we have the experience and the judgement that comes from experience, but we're also haunted by the thought that the painfully earned lessons of our past somehow have little application to our future. We're tired, disappointed, and even if things have worked out very well for us, we know in the long run it will mean nothing. And the long run gets closer every day. We're also tired of putting up with lies, excuses, fast talkers and snake oil salesman, and most of all, seeing others make the same mistakes we made, no matter how much we try to warn them.

All that's really left, and worth keeping, is love. And those we love are starting to die. It's the price we pay for the privilege and joy of our stay, however brief, in this incredible universe. It's the price I accept gladly.

It's part of being human, it always has been. Shakespeare wrote the most beautiful poem in the English language when he reached our age, about this very same realization.

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by:

—This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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