Life and the Hanging Coin.

I was making my bed this morning when I was struck, apparently without any obvious prompting, by the fact that I have never been or done anything notable. I asked myself whether I’d ever achieved anything of substantial significance. Not really. And then I asked myself whether I’d ever made any major difference to anything. Not knowingly. My immediate response was one of simple disappointment. I felt that I must have failed to grasp some opportunity somewhere along the road, and by so failing allowed myself to remain insignificant.

It didn’t last too long because it’s the same for most of us, isn’t it? We plod through our lives without ever scaling any previously unclimbed peaks, or winning any battles when the odds are stacked against us, or catching the serial killer before he can strike again. It seems that 99.9% of human beings are no more than monuments to mediocrity. And then it all comes to an end and, as Shakespeare wrote: Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

So why do we venerate life so much, as most of us do? I’m no exception to that, regarding all life as sacred and preserving the life force of any creature when presented with the opportunity. Is this the obverse side of the same coin, and is it why I’ve never been able to accept that this mysterious and staggeringly complex thing called life stops and submits to oblivion when the human host casts off its mortal coil?

When regarding this question, it seems that most people toss the coin and accept the evidence of whichever side is visible when it lands. I’ve never been so lucky – or so gullible, if you prefer. When I toss the coin it hangs in the air in precisely the same way that everything else doesn’t. It hangs there still.