Everybody Has an Age

No one is ageless. Everyone has an age. Which is to say that each of us in this time, this present, through which our minds now meet, exists at a particular stage and season of life, having lived through the previous stages, and, unless an untimely event occurs, evolving through the remaining stages of the human life cycle before passing into the Great Mystery.

But life can play a trick on us if we focus on the spotlight that naturally highlights those in the most active period of adulthood, the rosy center of life. We can come to think that humans have no beginning and no end. That our lives are eternal, and we can continue this vibrant existence forever. Certain modern entertainments exacerbate this unhealthy tendency by portraying the lives of the characters without respect to the natural arc of their human existences. And education these days overemphasizes the God-like activity of human beings at the cost of minimizing their creaturely limitations.

But the idea of an eternal life here is an illusion. Life itself, in itself (an only in itself), is indeed eternal. But we are only bit players in the drama of Human Life. We say our lines and then exit right.

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. (Isaiah 40:6)

Everybody has an age.