Daniel-my legs-as yours-work at a relative diminished capability. They shake a bit, my hands as well making this keyboard a bit of a challenge and my responses usually somewhat short.
I hear you my brother. Be patient with your self. Be kind to your diminished self. The flood of youth is gone, now we trickle slowly past our nadir and reach down to the sea where Ocean awaits our coming.
We were meant to wind down this mountain. We were meant to leave this life in our time.
We must stand strong as the young look to us in order to gauge what is to come for them.
In South America there is a tribe that has this custom. Each year the oldest woman in the tribe, we're talking a woman in her eighties. Each and every year she sits before all her people and asks that they strap a hive of stinging bees to her bare ancient chest and back. She sits there motionless without expression on her face. She sits until the bees are exhausted stinging her.
I first saw this in my early 20;s. I could not then understand such cruelty.
I saw the same film tract in my 60's and it seems so obvious to me then.
She is giving them her strength for their days to come.
How can a young man or women weaken before the trials of this life with such a grandmothers eyes upon them.
She is giving them a gauge, a measurement of pain and a measurement of what they can endure when the people are hard pressed by this world.
Now I think of you when I think of her. Thank you for showing the only young how to face an unendurable fate,
Thank you for showing me the same.