While standing by a river,
the Master said,
“What passes away is, perhaps, like this.
Day and night it never lets up.”

Analects of Confucius - Book 9, Chapter 17
(Translated by Robert Eno)
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“Hello!” a voice rang down from nowhere.

“Hellooo!” it yelled again as two grannies sought to find from where it came.

“Hi, yeah, up here,” a middle-aged woman called down toward their wheelchairs.

As the ancient mummies craned their necks to see who was squawking from above, the woman leaned over her balcony and said, “I know you mean well, but feeding bread to those birds leads to wing deformities!”

Why if I had my bow I woulda slung an arrow in her general direction, harassing people with one foot in the grave like that.

“You listen to me, lady,” I wanted to yell. “If those old-timers wanna toss their last scraps of social security bread at ducks then you leave ’em alone!”

I didn’t have to, though. Those sweet geriatrics ignored that wench and went on feeding.
(That or they were deaf as hell.)

By some cosmic intervention this water-side scene occurred as I was writing about this quote. It served as a reminder that old age will catch us all.

Fortunately I read “On the Shortness of Life” when I was young. Here’s the gist of Seneca’s work in a snapshot:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.”

His wisdom made me realize how the existence we take for granted is in short supply. We have, what, eighty years if we’re lucky? And there’s a chunk on the front end which is barely remembered, and a chunk on the back end which is, well, barely remembered?

From that book forward I vowed to live my spry and active years by asking, “What’s the most efficient use of my time right now?”

And if that means feeding wildlife when I’m half-dead, then you leave me be.

So I ask you: Have you used your time wisely today?