Meditations on Time and Life

The topic of time and life has been immortalised by philosophers through the ages, and by the philosopher in each of us.

On today's menu we have:

(1) A scoop of chicken soup served up by Rabindranath Tagore:

The butterfly counts not months but moments,

and has time enough.

(2) A pâté of lore proffered by Zhuangzi:

朝菌不知晦朔，蟪蛄不知春秋，此小年也。楚之南有冥灵者，以五百岁为春，五百岁为秋；上古有大椿者，以八千岁为春，八千岁为秋。而彭祖乃今以久特闻，众人匹之，不亦悲乎！

(3) A slab of reality check lobbed into the plate of ageing by Pliny:

In the 1st Century, Pliny devoted an entire chapter of The Natural History to people who lived longest. Among them he lists the consul M Valerius Corvinos (100 years), Cicero’s wife Terentia (103), a woman named Clodia (115 – and who had 15 children along the way), and the actress Lucceia who performed on stage at 100 years old.

Then there are tombstone inscriptions and grave epigrams, such as this one for a woman who died in Alexandria in the 3rd Century BC. “She was 80 years old, but able to weave a delicate weft with the shrill shuttle”, the epigram reads admiringly.

Not, however, that ageing was any easier then than it is now. “Nature has, in reality, bestowed no greater blessing on man than the shortness of life,” Pliny remarks. “The senses become dull, the limbs torpid, the sight, the hearing, the legs, the teeth, and the organs of digestion, all of them die before us…” He can think of only one person, a musician who lived to 105, who had a pleasantly healthy old age. (Pliny himself reached barely half that; he’s thought to have died from volcanic gases during the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, aged 56). (Excerpted from Do we really live longer than our ancestors? by Amanda Ruggeri)

(4) For dessert, I am throwing in, for good measure, one of my favourite 'jokes' as narrated by Woody Allen.

I placed the word jokes in inverted commas because, funny as it may be, this one is not really a joke per se. It's a wry observation of the illogic of the thoughts, words and deeds that keep mushrooming from our mere existence as we sleepwalk through a life that we all agree we must 'cherish'.