Another Choice

The life-thrust, the joy of life, the impetuous, eager confidence of the life-force which animates each body from the moment of its birth, well occupies the physical house and mobilizes most of the moments of its time.

This imperious vital eagerness in its innocence, in its ignorance of defeat, of suffering and death, provides, by its very intensity, almost every one of us with the needed distance.

The force of life by its very nature knows itself eternal, irresistible, inexhaustible and ever new.

But here it depends on the human, terrestrial body to express itself and, if that is taken away, it too must cease – or, at any rate, disappear.

The influx of energy in the bud about to open, in the frolics of the young goat, in the foal bounding ahead across the prairie, in the child running towards the foaming waves on the beach, in the dancer leaping towards her right note – this impetus knows no contradiction.

Until menace shows itself.

***

Ever since birth, gradually the evidence presents itself of the limited duration, as well as of the successive stages of all human life and of the precariousness of the status of physical being in this physical world. Not only does this evidence get further confirmed with the passage of time, but not one single proof of its contrary – of another physical status here upon earth – can ever be considered as factual. The pattern is invariable and absolute= this human body is born, grows and develops to its optimal adult capacity and, even before it reaches this maturity, it has already begun to deteriorate, till the process of ageing takes over and all faculties diminish and weaken and comes the inevitable final instant of cessation – of death. And this is merely the best of scenarios: for evidence is presented as well of an altogether other gamut of possibilities, most of them unpredictable, which demonstrate the absence of any security as of any guarantee.

Death can happen at any moment.

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