Life is Fleeting

You don’t have to be a religious person to enjoy and benefit from reading the Psalms. Even agnostics and atheists have found comfort in that classy collection of contemplative literature. The crises of life are addressed each in its own place there. Suffered betrayal?  Psalm 55. Dealing with anxiety issues?  Psalm 91. Struggling to understand why evil seems to prosper? Psalm 73.

I was this weekend considering Psalm 39. It’s a meditation on mortality. In the past few years I have lost several good friends from when I was a young man. My generation seems to be on the way out. The latest (last month) was Murray Polushin. Aside from having a special humor, he was one of the more articulate people I have known, well read and able to hold his own in a discussion with most anyone. He was able to dissect ideas and examine them critically.

I recall the time when Murray, who had just returned to Edmonton from college in the USA, was staying a few days with my then roommates and me in our apartment at Riverside Towers. We had another guest at the same time --- a super enthusiastic fellow named Tony Albert. Tony was a closer and did not like accepting No. Early one evening Murray and Tony started debating why it was that Americans seemed more prone to violent crime than did Canadians. They discussed this all evening and were at it when I went to bed around 11. I got up the next morning to get ready for work, and discovered they had been up all night and were still debating that same topic. When I got home at day's end, they were still going....I won't say strong.....they were flagging a bit....but they were still at it.

There is a continual stream of replacement humans coming along as babies are born and enter our lives or as adults wander in as strangers. They don’t really take the place of the ones we have long known because we do not have a history with them. I am not saying don’t build anything with them. Of course we should, but we should also treasure our old friends and also our families. We are social beings and need each other.