"Death and Fear."

H,

When we were younger, I think we lived in fear of everything and then of death. Perhaps not in the physical decay that ends in death. We were far too young to be that precious about such things. Our fear was in the more urgent things. It was about not making a mark or having impact or dying in a hole somewhere, very old, without a single sign that we had been here. We worried that we were wrong and all our adventures where flights of fancy and not a holy pilgrim to eternal stars.

Still, there was beauty in those old days that death and fear could not take. There was the old black tea and groundnuts and coca cola. There was football. There were sterling nights and brighter mornings and a feeling that incubation could be beautiful, because the future release was good and sure to come. There was music and the eternity in that swoon. There was the writing and the reading and the atmosphere and the kneeling down in search of the sun.

Yet, all of that still in the shadow of our fears. We think of these things in memory, so they feel sweeter and more together than they actually were. Today is where we live. Today is what really matters. How we act today, the love we give, the kindness we share and the way we open the doors to growth are the real signals of our better selves. We are still on that march to the stars. Up there, fear and death are obsolete.