Something I dug out of an old journal
We are short, we fly through life quickly. Why then, do our short lives have such an impact upon us? I think it is because we force ourselves to measure time by our lives, or rather, in a way that makes it seem to be a long span of time. Assuming the average lifespan to be about 80 years, why does that seem long? 80 isn’t really a very large number. 80 berries isn’t very much (well, depends on the berries), 80 grains of rice is practically nothing at all, and while $80 seems like a lot to a kid, it is hardly anything to an adult. Conversely, 80 bars of gold is one hell of a lot, same with diamonds. So then, are we measuring our years with numbers for valuable things? Are we likening each year to a bar of gold? A diamond? And then we also must think, why do we fear the short? What is our problem with accepting that a human life is one of the shortest spans of time in the universe???
Maybe it’s not an envy of billion year-old stars, but simply a desire for life, more life; or rather, an aversion to the end of life, death, which is demonized in most societies on Earth. Or worse yet, the religions that proclaim that the dead find peace with their God in some sort of celestial cocktail party, but then grieve and lament deaths when they occur. It’s simply hypocrisy!
