Thirty Nine More Summers

This morning, I woke up to the sad news that Leonard Nimoy (aka Mr Spock from Star Trek) had died at the age of 83.  I was saddened for the loss of one of the characters with whom I had grown up with, and whose spats with Captain Kirk I had enjoyed to watch play out on screen and whose underlying love and respect for each other was always evident, even in their darkest moments.  Although deeply saddened by the news, it was another thought that occurred to me, the realisation of which shocked me rather suddenly and more deeply.

The thought that came unbidden to my mind was that if I also am to live to the age of 83 years, I will see only another 39 more summers.  Old age and death have always seemed so remote to my thinking.  I never ponder them since they are the inevitability of life and there is nothing that I can do about either of them.  With each key stroke on my keyboard, I have aged.  With each key stroke on my keyboard, I have moved inexorably towards my end.  Everyday, we live out our lives and at the end of each, we are sure that we have many more ahead of us, many more opportunities to change things, to do all of those things that we wish to do, to fulfill our dreams.  "I'll do it tomorrow."  "I'll get around to it next week."  "I'll do that next year."  I too have these thoughts.  I am sure every single one of us has them for one reason or another.  There is after all, only so much that can be achieved within a day.

Each day of our lives is already filled with so much that we have to accomplish in order to survive.  School, university, and work take up huge amounts of our time for those of us not yet retired.  That's 33% of our time allocated at least and if not more.  Sleep accounts for around another 33% of our time.  Now we are left with about 30% of 'free time'.  But is that time free?  We have to eat.  In order to eat we must prepare food.  In order to prepare food we must go and purchase some groceries.  There's administration of our lives to deal with too - paying bills and banking, checking insurance policies, and so on.  Slowly, the amount of free time ebbs away.  This is before we factor in any time for checking Facebook, Twitter and other social media, before we catch up on the news and perhaps the weather.  And if you happen to be a parent...  Well, my mind boggles with that one! How do we fit it all in?  When do we find the time for ourselves?  Where are the quiet moments of contemplation and thought, for reflective thinking and for making sense of everything that is going on?  And whilst you are thinking this, a nagging thought sits in your head, "I should call Mum and Dad."

Time is not on our side.  It marches on, flowing like an uncontrolled torrent whose waters we can try to slow down and dam, but the attempt to do so is futile.  Eventually the dam will break and the water will flow on towards its final destination, where the river is lost within the ocean.  Our days are numbered.  Those of us who are fortunate enough to live without illness or disease, we think of ourselves as immortal and untouched, but we are not.  From the moment we come into this world in a physical state, we begin the slow process of decay. The cycle of life must be completed.  I recall at this moment a line from Mr Keating in the movie Dead Poets Society, "We are food for worms boys."  Our time of life will inevitably cease and we will indeed go back to the earth where our bodies will nourish the soil and become new life.

I feel that there is a paradox that haunts human life.  When we are in the midst of it, we feel that we are immortal, that we will go on forever, that we will always exist, even though we know that logically this cannot be the case.  We know that life must come to an end but it is always the end of a different life, not our own and in this way of thinking, perhaps we sidestep the inevitable - that we too must one day cease to exist.  There is a part of me that is thinking as I write this, that maybe this way of thinking is driven by the fact that our spirit and essence of life knows a different story.  That the body my die but the soul lives on eternal?  Or perhaps we have tricked ourselves and conjured up another Santa Claus because we cannot face the thought that this is really it?  Whatever your thoughts on life, death and the after-life, there is one inescapable thing: the body, as a living organism cannot survive indefinitely.  Our days are numbered.  How then should we live out those days?  

Mr Spock was famous for his saying, "Live long and prosper."  I'd like to add something to this because I feel it is not complete.  It lacks a kind of definition.  What does he mean by prosper?  For me, to prosper in life is to live happily, a deep rooted, in the guts of your stomach and a fluttering of the heart kind of happy.  Prosperity is not economic and monetary success.  I thought about this yesterday actually and how I often say that we should look on the world through the eyes of a child.  When I thought about that yesterday, I changed my mind about it.  I would rather look upon the world as a dog sees it.  A dog lives their life in the moment; they find joys in the simplest of pleasures, they make the most of what they have, when they have it; they wear their heart on their sleeve for everyone to see - their emotions are plainly and sometimes painfully evident; and a dog craves love and gives love unconditionally.  That is the way to live - isn't it?

So then, if I am to enjoy (for summer is my time of great enjoyment) only another 39 summers, I had better make the most of every single one.  If I am going to suck all of the marrow out of life (thank you Henry Thoreau) then I should do so today, starting right now.  If there is something that you have planned to do, begin it today.  Make a start.  I can assure you that once the movement begins, it will inevitably gather pace and momentum.  Please don't leave important things undone.  Say I love you. Offer a smile to the world. Make a positive difference.  Our time may be short, but by golly, we can make it such a time as to be worthy of being remembered, a time that will echo across eternity to the furthest star of the universe.  Live long and prosper by all means but just make sure that along the way you love, that the love starts with you, and you wag your tail as much as you darn well can for as long as you are able.

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Blond Hair And Board Shorts

A man with shaggy, blond, unkempt, sun bleached hair, who is wearing nothing other than a pair of board shorts, is walking barefoot along the sand of a tropical, palm tree lined beach.  He walks close to the waters edge, so that each time a wave breaks and pushes up the beach, the water covers his feet before once more receding.  Running around the man, bounding into the water, running back to the sand, barking with fun, is an equally scruffy looking dog.  On the faces of both, to be seen clearly by any casual observer, is written joy and contentment with life.

It is a summer's day in England. An adolescent boy sits on the pebbles of the beach and watches the waves lapping at the shore.  The boy has just been swimming and beads of water run from his hair, over his shoulders and down his back, but he does not care.  The sun is warming and he knows that he will soon be dry.  He stares out across the calm and flat ocean, that is constantly changing shape, undulating with small movements, as each swell attempts to break the calmness but lack the power to do so, dying on the pebbles of the beach as if collapsing, exhausted, over the finish line.  The boy's mind begins to drift, to wander and he imagines where his life will lead him and what it is that life has in store for him.

The winds of the dry season blow, lifting sand from the beach, stirring up the dust of the roads, across the land comes the wind, dropping these tiny particles of the rocks and earth across a parched countryside, that is now into its fifth month without the rains.  Barren is the ground, brown is the grass, and withered and lifeless are the trees that the wind passes over.  The wind brings no cooling relief from the heat of the sun, the air it brings is stifling and serves only to increase the temperature, like a breeze that fans the smouldering embers of a fire.  On the beach, barefooted, blond haired and wearing only a pair of board shorts, approaches a lone figure.  At times he gazes out across the ocean, he stares up at the clouds, sometimes marvelling at the exquisite formations, sometimes he sees in a cloud the shape of an animal, and he watches mesmerised as a pod of pelicans launch themselves from the surface of the water, and take to the air in flight.  The man might walk alone but he is not lonely.  He smiles and laughs to himself often and people look at him and think that perhaps he has been touched by the hand of madness.  And they would be right.  This man has been touched by the madness that comes of having pursued a childish dream and of turning that dream into a waking reality.  This man walks in the knowledge that life rewards those that seek out the truth for themselves and discover their one true path.  It was insanity that drove him onwards and allowed him to find the light that was within.

I had a dream once and I dismissed it.  At the beach in England, during the summer months, my heart was always so full of joy, content and happy.  I could not think of anything else that would make me more fulfilled than to live by a tropical beach.  I dismissed this dream because I thought it was stupid, I believed it was unachievable, but more than this, I thought that it was not what I was supposed to do with my life.  For me, life was all about finding a job, earning enough money to support myself, leaving home, raising my own family.  I managed the first three of those, the last eludes me still.  Those were the things expected of me.  Everything else I was told, was foolhardy and stupid.  When I had the vision of the beach, I would say to myself it was impossible.  I would ask myself what would I do there?  How would I live?  How would I support myself?  I have a logical brain and because of this, I could see no sense in my dream, and so I dismissed it as the foolish thought of youth.   

However, what I had not counted on, was that this dream was so deeply rooted in the core of my being, that my heart never let it go.  From my teenage years onwards, everything that I have ever done, was completed with the ultimate goal of achieving my dream.  I was not consciously aware of this.  Some other power drove me in that direction and I subconsciously made the decisions that led me there.  Some how, I ended up where I always wanted to be.  The journey was not straightforward.  In fact, I could not have taken a more convoluted and twisted road if I had tried.  And it is this fact that brings me great joy and hope in my life.

I did not set out for my life to be the way it is.  So much happened by chance and opportunity.  Everyone has those same chances in their lives.  I am no more unique or blessed than any one else.  What this tells me, is that if you have something inside of you that holds deep meaning for your life, then there is a power that is going to steer you towards it, whether you are conscious of it or not, and no matter the decisions that you take.  That power could be given many names but I like to think of it as simply, love.  If you believe in love, then you can achieve anything.  If you believe in love, then you can accomplish your dreams.  Love is the force that drives life.  And it is life that brings love.  The eternal cycle will always go on until the ending of the universe.

You have the power to accomplish your dreams.  All that you need can be found within.  Search your heart,  listen to its voice and act on what it tells you.  Create the life that you want, not the life that you think you should have.  Those who dream are not fools, but those who dream and do not act are the foolish.

Dream.  Dare.  Walk.  Love.  Light.

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