Look Over Yonder

Is advanced age a necessary condition for philosophical introspection? Probably - certainly - not. But what it does bring to the party is its implicit urgency, as time's wing-ed chariot thrusts us ever more swiftly toward the event horizon surrounding the unknown singularity of our nullification beyond it. That same, exacting, precise and dividing singularity which awaits us all, and about which we know absolutely - and cannot know whilst still this side of the Great Divide - no-thing. If one's mentality is suitably, religiously constructed, however, there might just be the salve of dogma or even true [or, at the very least, blind] faith to alleviate the inherent fear of the simple fact of ceasing to exist, as we all do, at least corporeally. As to any conception of an eternal soul, therein lies the rub: our perpetual, singular, human quest for certainty as to one's identity and purpose in this universe has never been tested from beyond the grave. We simply have nothing but our own assumptions, axioms or beliefs to go on. When we are young, such meditations are wholly abstracted from our invincible, eternal selves; our lives literally seeming to stretch infinitely before us: our invincible and unconquerable years having no apparent boundary that need be crossed in any foreseeable future. But the time inevitably comes when the balancing fulcrum of the now is nearer life's endpoint than its inception, with the weight and enormity of the void itself weighed against the entirety of one's existence hitherto. A sobering thought. I think another glass of wine is in order whilst the now still is...