Mixed Messages

Today I had lunch with my 90-year-old grandmother at her assisted living home and took the winding drive through the country to visit Camp Champions. These two experiences, coming one after the other as they did, combined to produce a confusing philosophical haze that has settled on me all afternoon and evening. I have been faced with my own mortality and gripped with an intense fear of mental degradation while simultaneously celebrating my own vitality and relishing the peculiar joie de vivre that washes over me from time to time when I'm especially content with where I am and where I'm headed. At times like these I am indecisive, hesitant, perhaps tortured. Speaking generally, I don't know whether to lament that which has been lost or to exalt the wonders that are surely to come. I feel confident that each response is appropriate for different periods of our lives (The Birds and Ecclesiastes would agree). The trouble comes when one feels the urge to participate in both.