Saturday, December 22, 2018

Into the Breach

I wish I could face the train wreck of mortality with its decline and inevitable death with the same insouciance as others, but I can't. I want to kick it in the teeth, gash out its eyes and scream at the top of my diminishing lungs in its ever-listening ears. I want to spite its dismissive smirk.

This is not complaining. I won't complain, except as passing small talk. I will revel in my death song. I will seize my joy. I will be a rebel with the youth of all ages, despite my lack of membership within its flourishing fountain.

This is not pessimism. I won't whine and expect the worst. I will draw upon every ounce of energy, spirit, spit, piss, blood, and sperm from this mortal coil so that all that is left is the mist of a well-spent morning, the wet and smell of the afternoon's monsoon torrents, and waxing colors of a brilliant sunset, all fading to black against the dusk of a well-spent life as a testament to a life lived up to its fullest capacity.

In doing all this, I won't pretend that if the cup of youth were offered up to my hungry lips that I would spurn it in trade for some lofty notion of a golden era still to come – because it won't come. What will come is the choice to face life as a gift more precious than gold, and to thereby make it so.

Loren M. Lambert © July 23, 2013

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