“Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.”
—Samuel Johnson.
How is it in life that we get so many days—on average over 25,000 of them—yet the odds tell us we’ll wonder where they all went at the butt end of it all? Life’s a sharp paradox; both too long when we’re in the thick of it and life’s tough, and too short when we’re faced with the throat of death. (Ask anyone dying of cancer about the latter.)
The reality of the situation before us, as we contemplate, but not for too long, is we haven’t got that long before we finally become what people who lived one hundred years ago have become—part of history.
It seems that we have to create our golden moments in the sun now. We run now a race; and to run far we somehow need to conserve our energies, finding ways to run sparsely, conserving our fuel.
To deliberate long or to waste our time and resources now is a crazy insanity; one that we’ll rue with clenched teeth one day.
Still, we have the option to run long and, in that, we can run far. We can extend our territories and influence—we can do so much good—we can work hard, investing in our families.
For the resourceful person, one running to finish the race well, they’ll fine tune and hone their efficiency and effectiveness, for they well know it will be over very soon, and certainly their youth is over in the blink of an eye.
Wisdom dictates that we see the hands of time at true speed… tick… tick… tick; the inevitable comes.
© S. J. Wickham, 2009.
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