The journey

I think anyone who reaches three score years and ten asks many questions, not only of themselves but of much they take for granted around them.  Slowing down and not being part of the race to survive means that one can ask questions about the past and present.  The future is the difficult one since it doesn’t include us (at least sometime in the not too distant future it won’t) and we haven’t been brought up or conditioned to consider the on-going “life event” without us.

Religions handle the subject by hypothecating a life after death. Asian philosophies speak of continuous rebirth and atheists suggest that this is it, death - with no return.

Whichever it is, the “event” is like no other and we are not really able to quantify the effect the lead up to the "event" will have on our psyche.  There is no question that the belief in ourselves as sentient beings comes wrapped in the knowledge that we are alive. Not to be alive is a step too far and we can’t really go there.  We can imagine not being around in the sense that we no longer play a part in events but there is a part of us that lives on in the genes and therefore, in the future!!

Memories and artefacts stay for a while but then we are gone!

If we were young with all our faculties this would seem sad, unfair and leave us unfulfilled but it is undoubtedly true that with age comes infirmity, confusion, memory loss and often pain. Under these circumstances, death is a release and a fitting end to a journey.

If we have been lucky the journey has been a varied one in which our much of the path has been chosen and not dictated. The memories, good and bad now, seen from a distance have story to tell. One can see a picture emerging, an unfolding “sequence” made up of personality characteristics that define the outcomes.   

Character in other words defines so much of who we are and what we make of the journey. It affects motives, it affects success, it affects friendships.    All this from a genetic character trait of which we have no say!!!

So all the talk of good luck, bad luck, being in the right place etc. etc. has little merit, our lives were defined by chromosomes and the struggle, if struggle there was, was to no avail, it was written in the stars!!