Malcolm Ledger
Thursday, 7th September 2023, Kyoto

It makes you think. A time to reflect and take stock. Three-quarters of a century. An easily comprehensible number, in a way that fifty-million, say, is not. Twenty-seven thousand, three-hundred and three days, each lived second written, engraved, on your face, body, and heart. The joys and griefs, the heartaches, regrets, and the moments of brief, shattering ecstasy.

A time to begin letting go, to put things in order, to get rid of the detritus of a life. What has been carefully accumulated over many years will eventually be dispersed and thrown away. Photos, letters, books, manuscripts, keepsakes, and mementoes; all the things that bolstered a false sense of self — “This is who I was. This is what made me, me.” All no longer needed. All will finally go.

And what will remain? The results of work, if any. The ripples from deeds, both good and bad, that have spread out, like gravity waves, into the world. And for a while, treasured memories in the hearts of those left behind who knew and loved you, as well as more unpleasant, ambivalent ones in the minds of those you hurt or wounded, whether intentionally or otherwise. Then these, too, will fade and disappear in their turn. And so you are finally brought face to face with the inescapable fact of death and oblivion, the inevitable, yet still incomprehensible, end of all things.

“And drop from out the universal frame
Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss,
That utter nothingness, of which I came”
(The Dream of Gerontius—J.H.Newman)

Shakespeare summed it up inimitably in the mouth of Macbeth.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

But knowing that, then what? Though each is given the priceless gift of time, in the face of death are despair and helplessness the only options? Is it easier to ignore the truth, to act as if life were everlasting, or to open the eyes, to see the natural wonder of each fleeting moment, to appreciate, and be grateful for, the uniqueness and evanescence of existence, its constant sweeping away of the old and regeneration of the new? It means to live fully in the time remaining to you, in the eternal moment, which is all we shall ever have.

It makes you think.

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More by Malcolm Ledger…
= For his prize-winning entry in WiK’s Seventh Writing Competition, see here.
= For a selection of his poems, see here and here.
= His other writing includes the following: Prologue to a War, An Unveiling, Ohigan