“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” – Tom Stoppard

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

11 July

Some day you and I will be dead. In fact, some day everybody will be dead. Maybe you don't believe in an afterlife - maybe with death it's all over. And if THAT'S the case, you should be kicking yourself for not being more single-minded about the credo of the materialist: "he who dies with the most toys wins."

But if you do believe in an afterlife and it's all over - like, ALL over - then we're all contemporaries: you, and me, and the President of the United States (all of them), and Emerson, and Leonardo, and Beethoven, and your parents, and my parents, and Dante, and Socrates, and all our children, and our grandchildren, and their grandchildren down to the fifth and sixth generations and beyond – the whole gamut, all the way from Adam and Eve right to whoever’s left at the Crack Of Doom. And we will know in an instant, in a twinkling of an eye, how important is the advice offered by a great man: "Our greatest responsibility in this life is to be good ancestors."