Life Goes On...

The road narrows...

It's February. I am feeling an urgency to write. After all, we don’t know how long we will be here; how much time we have. Once you reach sixty, believe me, it begins to feel like people are dropping all around you. Some are peers. Some are younger. Some older. Oddly, it is the loss of those who are older that most calls me to attention. How much older? Ten years? Twenty years? The years fly by in a blink. A simple snap of the fingers and the pages on the calendars flip, month into new month and then another year is down. There you are, writing the same old New Year’s resolutions once again, depressed to see the same unmet goals. Or worse, you find you have no goals. Nothing at all. Life is just a series of repeated days. The days may be good ones. They may be full of contentment and even a kind of joy. But the days are passing, passing, nevertheless, and the road ahead is narrowing as you weave your way toward old age and death. 

If there is a story to be told, then I’d better be about telling it. And no time to waste. Not like in the days of our youth when time seemed limitless and only rare and random tragedy ripped life away. We were all about love in those days and committed to creating a brave new world. And perhaps we would have done that, but in our naivety and yes, "in our youth," we were easily ambushed. Youth––the very essence that spurred us onward and upward––also  derailed us, leaving us sidetracked, scattered and lost in wild places.

“Love is but a song we sing. Fears the way we die…. Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together, try to love one another right now.” 

The Youngbloods