The Frail Life

What keeps us alive at our ripest age?

Routine.

Routine is the shelter of the gentle old. The smallest upheaval of this routine is deadly. It reminds the old about change. Though change is constant, the old seek to ignore its obvious presence. Frailty is their main quality. I see myself in the future, afraid, and I feel remorse. I lament humanity's inevitable degeneration. Let me outline an instance of this bad fact:

"A couple entered a restaurant. Every Sunday at the same time, they arrived. Ordering the same meal, the same drinks, the same salads, sitting at the same table, they maintained the same shivering equilibrium.

Until one day a vicious demon in man's form upset the elderly couple.

Cackling, sharp teeth glaring, he never brought out the salads they had meticulously ordered. He merely brought them their meals. Meals steaming hot, minus the expected the salads. Panic struck their eyes. Indignance followed. Simmering anger stewed for the remaining hour. It was a discontent the chink in their desperate routine continually kept lit. They feared and resented the slavering, conspiring demon who brazenly gloated over his triumph.

In fact, their entire evening was disturbed. Their sleep was restless that night. The next day, they were all fatigue. And their routine was further disturbed by their tiredness. All caused by the simple subtraction of one minor mechanical detail in their orderly and well-oiled lifestyle."

Frail! Frail is the future. Ugly, humiliating frailty! The strong bones of today will become frail. Frailing fate; the fate that frails! The strong mind does become frail with time. Shed a pitying tear for our frail race! For frailty conquers all in the mighty end!

But there is a bittersweet beauty in this morose scheme: at the point of greatest frailty, that is death and decay, our particles disassemble and reassemble to form strength once again. Our woeful deterioration holds the building blocks of new strength. And though all we know, all we are, all we have been, is destroyed by our incessant frailty, this same frailty gives growth to newness, whole newness.

It is a fact of nature--nothing more. It does not matter whether we glorify or berate, weep or laugh. Nature works invisibly oblivious to all. Nature has its own routine that keeps the frail world secure, and there is poor little we can do to change it. So only one question now remains, but you do not have to answer it immediately. It is the one question which has plagued humankind since its conception. I ask only that you think on it, ruminate on it, lose a little sleep on it.

Does humanity have a purpose or is existence meaningless?