The dance when it’s been danced

“Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life’s bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it’s been sung? The dance when it’s been danced? It’s only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can’t arrange our own happiness, it’s a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”

Tom Stoppard – ‘Coast of Utopia’

2026 is, it would seem, a year in which life has decided that for us at least, further urgent lessons are needed to complete our schooling; particularly when it comes to matters of mortality.

As we grow older and gingerly approaching our dotage, it is perhaps little surprise that for many of us our thoughts increasingly incline toward the fragility of our existence on this blue/green orb and to the contemplation of whether the ‘after’ has any meaning at all when it comes to the curtailment of ‘our little lives’.

Against this sombre background the untimely and increasingly frequent passing of our greatest heroes and icons (the loss late last year, for example, of the literary giant that was Tom Stoppard and, just this very week, of the incomparable Dolly Parton) – leaves us shell-shocked and wrung-out, engulfed in tearful melancholy.

This it turns out, however – is just the tip of the iceberg. In a world already beset by a sea of troubles, it is losing those who are close to us that wounds the most, leaving us lost without a compass in miasmas of incomprehension, rapidly ending up shipwrecked on the jagged shores of grief.

This year has also marked the passing of loved ones, of friends, of family,  of those who we loved but with whom we have lost touch… even of much respected neighbours.

This feels too much…

Next time – I promise more positivity!