Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Season(s) of a year or life (01/13/11)
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TITLE: Seven ages revisited | Previous Challenge Entry
By Graham Starling
01/20/11 -
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Born into a world of discomfort and dependence; senses bombarded with new sensations, many of them unpleasant, and our only response is to cry. Newly come into the world, the world extends no further than our skin, and when that world is filled with anything but contentment, all we can do is quiver helplessly and give voice to our outrage until we are enveloped in sweet softness and our needs met. We see, we hear, we know we are loved.
Innocence
Comes childhood, the season of expanding horizons; every day a new adventure. New skills to master, new places to explore, new wonders to discover, and always close by, the gentle voice to explain, the soft lips and soothing hands to kiss and caress our injuries and take away the pain. With courage renewed, we step forth once more, oblivious to the world’s sharp edges.
Self-discovery
Innocence lost in a maelstrom of feelings and change. Eve’s legacy and Adam’s awakens in us with a burning fire. Knowledge of good and evil, where evil threatens to overwhelm. The selfishness within; awareness of how others see us and a desire to be accepted, to be acknowledged, to be loved. Passions run deep and fierce, and every slight, every misspoken word strikes home like a barbed arrow, tearing at our very soul, demanding a response in kind. We stumble through a maze of confusing emotions, striking blindly in our pain, even at those whose love has always been there.
Self-reliance
In time we learn to know ourselves, to trust ourselves. In time how others respond to us matters less because we find the strength within to trust ourselves. The stormy passions ebb leaving quieter waters; rock pools of affection, of love. No more reason to fight for our position amongst our peers, no more need to strike out in jealous rage at the least hint of challenge. Here at last we can step beyond ourselves and look to those around us. Here at last we can give love without needing it first.
The narrowing
Until now the horizons have continued to stretch out wider and further. Until now we have learned more of the world, grown in our abilities, dreamed our dreams of conquest and adventure. Until now we have felt invincible, unstoppable, eternal. Until now. Now comes the narrowing. Now comes a growing awareness of our limitations. Where yesterday we might have run all day, today heavy breath comes wheezing all too soon. Yesterday only children were young, but today there are men and women with smoother skin, stronger muscles, keener minds.
Unfulfilled dreams crowd our thoughts. Where did all the time go? All those things we were going to do tomorrow and tomorrow, until this rude awakening, this sudden awareness that there are more yesterdays now than tomorrows.
Panic takes hold, a need to reach back in time, to grasp hold of the things of youth, to embrace what once was, to seize the moment and live life more fully, waste it less. Too few of us reach the narrowing with a sense of fulfilment, a sense that we have not frittered our youth away on meaningless frivolity. Too few of us can meet the first indication of our mortality and face it down with calm acceptance, knowing that we have made good use of the time given us.
Acceptance
In time acceptance comes; awareness that all is as it should be. The narrowing way ahead of us slowly ceases to remind us of what we have not accomplished and instead becomes a permission not to fight so hard. Each day holds its trials; the aches, the growing weakness, the awareness of what we can no longer do, but each day also holds its treasures too; more time for friendship and for love, a slowing down that allows us to see more of the beauty of the world, a new chance to explore and discover wonders forgotten since childhood.
Waiting
There is a melancholy that threatens in old age. All the world hurrying by so fast and no hope to keep up, so many friends gone, so few days spent with family, and then a sense of guilt that you are stealing those days from their young lives. The narrowing continues, the end draws ever nearer and what lies beyond? A step into the unknown. A voice from childhood beckons, “To die would be an awfully big adventure.”
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