“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, a

nd 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 down 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."