As we get older, we begin to understand how very fragile life is. Perhaps this is the necessary upshot of simply having lived for some years. We have said “goodbye,” lived with and lost with those who have peopled our days. Some have been significant and some just passing through, but all are so very tender and so very stark in their humanity.
We are all earthily blood and bone, a physiology of cells conglomerated into systems of sinew and tissue, powered by positive and negative charges firing to move fluid and muscles in a remarkable “body” machine. The heart beats or hammers, synapses spark and arc as we move through life. We are merely one of so many creatures that inhabit this planet we call “Earth.”
In the entire scheme of things we are so very small; and yet so very, very large in our ability to love, create, hate, cherish, yearn and ache. The human spirit is a glorious thing to behold; power and perversity packed into a fragile, unprotected body that drives cultures, creates magnificently and destroys mightily.
The power of a soul roaring to life, reaching for fulfillment, striving for full glory of living realized is utter magnificence. The breath of desire and life and laughter charges through the cell-minutia of our make-up, causing us to tower as creatures walking the planet. And, yet, we are all so very small and so very delicate at the same time. What a remarkable and heartbreaking confluence of living we embody.
The soul, the breath, the heart of man reaches out to the universe to conquer, to control, to embrace and to be embraced. We strive to be unique as at the same time we hunger to be encased in the spirit of others; to know that we are not alone. It is this beautiful hunger that separates us and makes man glorious in our ability to create and mark the land; to leave evidence that we have lived.
And, to have lived well is a mighty undertaking, a journey of mind and heart and soul. It can be loud and sonorous, quiet and intense, breezy and bright. Each of us has a heart song to fling to the universe in our quest to be realized, to be counted, to make a difference. What that difference will be is the eternal question of bards and poets, criminals and saints, children and elders.
Yet, when all is done; when our spirit departs, what is left is simply bone and tissue; a quiet husk so very similar to other creatures that live and breathe and die. So the days of our living should be registered one to another. The acknowledgement that a soul, just like mine, walks in the person beside me is the grit of this living thing. There I am, as are you. And, we are magnificent.
Tags: fragile life, getting older, korth, robin korth
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 9:42 am and is filed under IOA Stories, Newsletter, Robin's Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
