Moribund

They—the Buddhists among others—say that as soon as you’re born, you start dying.  I suppose that’s true for some things, like your skin and hair cells, but it seems to me a bit of an overstatement; the real dying doesn’t start happening until your late twenties or early thirties.  And by the time you’re almost seventy years of age, the declension is in full swing.

The warranty on your body and mind expires sometime around the age you’re old enough to be eligible for the US Presidency, which is sort of ironic; you have to be in your declining years to qualify for the highest office in the land.  

Some folks are already on the downhill slide at 25, when a person can run for the House of Representatives or at 30, when one is allowed to pursue the US Senate, which perhaps explains why the interests of the future are discounted significantly in the setting of public policy.  In any event, it’s clear that the Federal government is made up almost completely by people who are essentially on their way out of here; no wonder so many of their decisions—and non-decisions—are both literally and figuratively killing us.

I tell myself I’m not particularly concerned about my own deliquescence; it is fascinating to watch how things that used to work quite easily, like fingers or knees, start to operate much less effectively and more painfully, but I suppose being able to observe their decline is something of a gift.  When the brain really begins to fail, one is unlikely to be aware and who knows, anosognosia may already be in full swing unbeknownst to the knower.

“Everything arises and passes away” is a fundamental truth of how the Nature operates, although it doesn’t seem to apply in the case of having to pee; that feeling seems to arise and keep arising, unless something is done about it.

So, pardon me now; Nature calls