Always

NIGHTMARISH, REALLY, being told by a good friend that he or she has cancer. The first implulse is to deny , run, and hide, because the news hits like a jackhammer. But then when one calms down a bit and starts to think about it, one starts getting a sense of hope.

You start to remember, for instance, that here in the twenty first century anything is possible. Anything is probable. If you are alive now, you have a chance to be alive a long time, just based on current state of the art medicine and disease treatment.

The progress we the human species have made was paid for at a high price, so we want to keep and take care of it. Hence, civilization. Hence, history and the other social studies. Preserving our knowledge, and using it to create new knowledge tomorrow is the key to our success.

We accept the fact that we are going to die, but we never accept it now, or in the immediate future. Its always a few moments away, at least. And better to keep it that way, because it is that way, the universe is that way, always pointing to the future, although ultimately, timeless.

Our eternal timelessless confuses us. In this lifetime we are so closely joined to the clock that the our ture nature, eternal timelessness, eludes us in our constant slinging to schedules and time. Truth is, we need never worry about dying, anymore than we need worry about second grade being different from first grade.

All the phases are different, the river of life journey is always good, always changing, transforming, never ending, always beginning.