Day 4 of 365 (What Keeps Life Worth Living)

Life is tenuous. Too hot of an environment and all the moisture flees from the body and we die from dehydration. Too cold a place and all the cell function slows and we freeze to death. If we are lucky sixty to eighty years elapse in a moderate zone and then the organs give out. 

Life, as noted, is tenuous. In each act we take we expose ourselves to risks, potentially lethal risks. A ride in a car can result in a car accident. A walk beneath a tree could end rapidly and tragically if a branch we to give out. Sitting still, a choice that can be made, might light to an embolism. 

 Still we long to live. Funny thing is that we learn, we grow, we find greater connection with the passing of each day. Eventually we have a web about us that is constructed of knowledge and concern and love and awareness. It is the existence of that web that makes the tenuous nature of life so hard to bear. It is also what makes small acts of kindness so meaningful. 

 Over the holidays some very nice friends provided us warmth and celebration that matched the season’s nature. They were joyful folks and they treated us in a way far better than there was a need too. We as it were had no electrical power and thus no means to celebrate as we usually would. There gracious choice was one of those moments that provide life its glow, its radiance. 

 This morning another old friend posted to me a note about a book he had read. It had been a long time since I have read a novel that was not pure fantasy. The fact that even thought he lives on another continent he thought of me made me smile. Connections, these are the things that matter.