ALIVE: A Love Story from Author Ben Bryant


This

love story

– with life – is not an excerpt from any of my books, it’s a brand new essay that popped out of my consciousness this morning.

Here’s the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t. – Richard Bach

If you know me you’ve no doubt heard me quote that Bachism more than once. It has been a comfort to me many times since I passed 60 and began to see loved ones – including my Mother and (chosen) Brother, Bob Collins – leave their physical units behind and return Home. This leads me to another of Mr. Bach’s fragments of wisdom: The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.

But I digress.

I’m a very-much-alive guy and have consistently refused to “act my age”. And yet, north of 80, it’s inevitable that one will occasionally ponder the unknown amount of time one and one’s beloved Wife have left in TSI (Time-Space-Illusion, aka Physical Reality). For an explanation of this arcane concept see Circumstances Beyond My Control, chapter 22: Spirit.

Anyhow, I woke up this morning with great joy and robust vitality in my physical unit and these thoughts of mortality wafted across my consciousness along with the idea at the top of this essay and I wondered.

I wondered.

Like a favorite pair of boots, the meat suit we don to survive here in the high pressure environment of TSI will show signs of wear after four score Earth years. That’s simply a fact. Eventually it will – like the aforementioned boots – collapse. This is the nature of the physical. No way around it and I don’t have a problem with that. If I did have a problem with that it would only cause angst and hasten the onset of decrepitude.

So what was it that my wondering produced?

It produced more Wonder. And it produced Gratitude. Gratitude; that I was, at 80, still robust and in possession of a high percentage of my physical prowess and all of my mental faculties. Gratitude; that my beautiful Elizabeth was the same and that she was once again my wife. (For an explanation of “once again” see Waiting for Elizabeth.) Gratitude that I still woke up with a purpose.

Mac 5

Like everyone else on this Planet, I have no idea how long all this will last but however long it is I intend to enjoy the experience and do all I can to make the most of still being

Alive!

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