Now that I'm approaching my 69th birthday, I find many clothes too tight, and some of my favorites worn so thin that they're almost see-through. Life is wearing thin, too. Especially hope.
When I was young, "Faith, hope, and love" were my mantras, in a sense. Love still hangs on sometimes, but the other two seem to be disappearing like an early morning fog over a lake. I can remember in my twenties when my hopes seemed to fly above the fog, as if on wings of a swan. Those days are only memories now.
The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (to borrow from Shakespeare) have taken their toll. Now whenever a light of hope appears on the horizon, it fades away as soon as I approach it--a mirage. Well-meaning friends sometimes remind me, "Life isn't fair." I already know that. Life is just pain. To borrow another phrase from The Bard, "Life is a player who struts upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Maybe the Christians are right, and our hope is beyond this world, way up in the sky, in that "beautiful somewhere". But in the meantime, all I can do here is keep muddling along.
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