A Man Alone Redux

I have an obscure feeling of being protected... No one has stepped out of the crowd, identified himself or herself as my protector, and then slipped back into that crowded anonymity, leaving behind nothing more than an brief echo. It's enough to make me ever alert to my need for help. I keep my eyes focused on the middle distance through which both peril and rescue sweep into my life. Perhaps, perhaps there are compassionate eyes watching my bold strides through experience. Are they aware of obstacles, hard realities of accident and fate, that proliferate like exposed roots and dislodged rocks on a walking path, threatening the walker who is staring at trees, flowers, birds, things of beauty that distract him from dangers? It's as if I were traveling over a roiling sea in a ship inadequate for such a stormy passage. As long as the weather stays fair and fair winds billow the sails, the ship will reach its destination. But should that fair weather vanish into storm, direst peril will leave me helpless, prayerful, doomed. I am neither relieved nor frightened by that fiction. It is simply an assessment of possibility a wary traveler makes for his peace of mind. As we age from youth to seniority, and feel our past confidence no longer resilient, some aspect of daring retreats into the soul, and curls into a deep animal sleep, dreaming only of safety and rest. Some take refuge in faith, and declare, 'I know that my redeemer liveth.' Others adopt a stoic sense of their personal fate within the Mystery of Fate, and achieve a nobility of spirit. Still others confidently plan daily endeavors, without recourse to faith or fate. Aging is the only mathematics I can comprehend. It demands no calculations, no right or wrong answers, no effort at mastery. Everyone excels at this discipline just be being mortal. It is a radically simple addition of one year after another which we trust to go on and on with no subtraction. At some unknowable point death sweeps into our life and takes each of us into its furious grasp. All we know is that each of us dies a man or a woman alone. This is the final stage of human knowledge. And in a flash we will realize how this knowledge attains this grace: each of us burns up all the energy of their life, and casts a fierce light against the darkness.