"LIFE LINES"

By Jack Reeves

"Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived." Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. died at 39.
Alexander the Great, age 32.
Jesus, 33.
Wolfgang Mozart, 35.
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, 39.
Abraham Lincoln, 56.
Hank Williams, age 29.
Buddy Holly, 23.
John Kennedy, 46.
There is little time to savor life. We are always close to death. Ninety seconds without oxygen can be insufficiently sufficient.
Hank Williams had 348 months.
Look what Jesus did in three years, roughly 36 months.
Kennedy was president for only 27 months.
Much we do in life reminds us of the passing of time--time perhaps devoid of much purpose.
The wise find interests that imbue life with meaning. It is not in trivia, TV, or the tawdry touted as important. Meaning is not in the shallows of life but in the depths. There go.

"On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light."
Freya Stark