By Ineke Hughes
Salmon Arm, BC
Life’s a bitch and then you die. Death’s a bastard when you haven’t lived. Which camp do you fall into?
With no time to prepare, the world in its entirety is thrown into the chaos of a pandemic, a new disease that, initially at least, made us all aware of the fragility of our lives. The finiteness of our allotted time. The question becomes, how much time do you have left? You don’t know, do you? It’s the luck of the draw, a throw of the dice. My question is, are you living the life you envisioned for yourself 10, 20, 40 years ago?
The worst thing about aging is that you begin to realize how little time you have left. Now in my seventh decade, I’ve ridden the first wave of contagion and come to rest on the sand, unscathed. I wonder how much more time I have? Enough to learn all I would like to learn? To travel and explore all the places I yearn to explore? No. My allotted time will come to an end sooner rather than later. Wonders will never cease, but I will. Sad to say, so will you.
So, bearing in mind Calvin’s immortal words to Hobbes that “one of the remarkable things about life is it’s never so bad that it can’t get worse,” I encourage you to camp in the first category. Gather ye rose buds while ye may, etc. etc. Or not. In either case, don’t worry. Nothing is under control.
To What End?
Copyright © Ineke Hughes, 2020