Nurture your Nature

Out of circulation

I'm dying (we all are). But am I living?

What does being alive really mean? What is the point of staying alive past one's expiration date?

Are we-who-still-live willing to embrace our mortality and immortality?

Out of circulation.

The coins minted the year I was born are scratched, discolored, worn, the copper tarnished, the nickel dulled and whatever was silver melted down long ago. No bills remain that aren't tattered, torn. What was once of some use in exchange for a cookie or a glass of milk, is now deemed worthless and tossed in a jar or abused, flattened on tracks as trains pass or stretched and molded into trinkets at a hot tourist spot (now closed).

Is it my time to go? If so, why do I hang on.

I'm old. Not so much by the calender date. That's just a reminder that I've survived thus far. So many haven't. Am I old because I remember when songs first came out — fifty years ago? Am I old because I remember, albeit vaguely, how things used to be done? No, I'm old because I can't zig and zag and zog like the youth I once was. I just can't keep up as my body gives out.

But I'm not dead yet. Just slowly dying. Like wasps in autumn, a final frenzy before a frost puts their sting to rest. Am I resting when I nap or merely practicing lying prone before I'm laid out? In the morning, do I look like I've slept in a coffin? Some days it takes more than sunlight to get me up and more than coffee to wake me.

My expiration date cometh. Sooner if I don't take better care of myself and fall off the shelf. I'll have to embrace that reality now or later, like it or not. And I will. We all do at the end.

Until then, I may as well keep learning — and living.

But do I look beyond? Realize that my life is a gift not just to myself but to others. What kind words or wisdom, still unspoken, need to be said. What inspiration I wrote for someone will be stuck in a book and forgotten, to be read and bring forth smiles decades or centuries later. Beyond the Veil of Death will my actions still matter in the material world. I remember my mistakes and shudder.

My Muse might know, but he remains as mute as the angels that pass overhead, those who will return at the proper hour to chant the final poem.

~425 words
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