Growing old

The person whom we have the best opportunity to observe during the course of our lifetime is of course ourselves. Observing the aging process is fascinating, whilst wrinkles deepen and more and more of us sags there is something else happening inwardly. I think it is in "The Great Divorce" where C.S. Lewis speaks about a person becoming more and more transparent until they disappear altogether and in "Lord of the Rings" Frodo changes each time he uses the power of the ring, more of it and less of him, his own nature becoming more insubstantial.

I can't help feeling that death, was not intended to be sudden but a gradual moving towards another life with our grip on this life more and more tentative, until one day we just let it go and travel on to what awaits us. I always want to be ready because you never know what a day holds. I find upon observing myself that I am nearer to that letting go than I was. Not in a morbid sense but simply that my grip on the world and its ways is less "white knuckle" than it used to be. I am not ready yet to meet my maker. I believe there is more for me to do; but I am on a journey nearer the end now than the beginning.

In the Dylan "covers" album "Down in the Groove" which bombed critically (although I think "90 miles an hour down a dead end street" is a great song) [I took you home from a party and we kissed in fun. A few stolen kisses and no harm was done. Instead of stopping when we could, we just kept right on. Then suddenly we realised that the brakes were gone]. Check it out. Where was I, oh yes. There is a song on there called "Death is not the end". I agree with that.

There is a Christian song called "heaven is better than this". I recall a guy, sadly no longer with us saying "It better be, or I want my money back!"

"I don't know what the future holds but I know who holds the future". (Martin Luther King).

What I am trying to say in the midst of the self induced distractions is. Growing old is not bad, just different. I quite enjoy watching my passage towards my destination, but I ain't planning an exit any time soon.