H,
When we were younger, I think we lived in fear of everything and then of
death. Perhaps not in the physical decay that ends in death. We were far too
young to be that precious about such things. Our fear was in the more urgent
things. It was about not making a mark or having impact or dying in a hole
somewhere, very old, without a single sign that we had been here. We worried
that we were wrong and all our adventures where flights of fancy and not a holy
pilgrim to eternal stars.
Still, there was beauty in those old days that death and fear could not
take. There was the old black tea and groundnuts and coca cola. There was football.
There were sterling nights and brighter mornings and a feeling that incubation
could be beautiful, because the future release was good and sure to come. There
was music and the eternity in that swoon. There was the writing and the reading
and the atmosphere and the kneeling down in search of the sun.
Yet, all of that still in the shadow of our fears. We think of these
things in memory, so they feel sweeter and more together than they actually
were. Today is where we live. Today is what really matters. How we act today,
the love we give, the kindness we share and the way we open the doors to growth
are the real signals of our better selves. We are still on that march to the
stars. Up there, fear and death are obsolete.