Longevity Reconsidered
It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with
beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.
—Don Marquis
(1878-1937, American Humorist, Journalist)
Everybody wants to live forever now. We resist having an expiration date stamped on our existence. Though intellectually, we understand that body parts, like the mechanisms of machines, wear out, we still deny the inevitable.
So why do we cling so fiercely to an existence that is not necessarily very satisfying when we have ostensibly reached the end of our design life?
Did we not find that “happy moment” where we were burned up with beauty? Do we think that if we hang around longer, we’ll somehow miraculously find it? Or it will, even more miraculously, find us?
I know a lot of old people. They aren’t very happy, for the most part.
Their main problem, it seems, is that they haven’t put to rest their old ghosts. Until they (and we, too) do that, none of us will ever find happiness or peace or whatever it is we seek.
We are our own jailers. Only we can set ourselves free.
–phoebe kate