Springtime in the northern climes is characterized to a great extent by the ephemeral. Early flowers bloom and die within days, the yellow-greens of trees and grasslands transform into verdant grays by mid-summer. Bird song signal mating ritual and very shortly the woods are quiet. And but the ephemeral is not just a spring phenomenon: the vitality of youth degrades into the ennui of middle age and as a rule pretty much everyone and thing is simply waiting for their/its ultimate demise.
What really brings this home to me personally is the realization of my very own physical and mental decline. Despite my best efforts to counteract the aging process through exercise, healthy eating and right thinking, the ephemerality of existence hovers over me like a large foot over a small insect.
I know there’s nothing unique about this realization: most everyone experiences the negative results of aging, which, it seems to me, accounts for the tenacity of religion, able to sustain its hold on so many despite the delusional nature of the enterprise. But then so perhaps there’s something to seeking a ground of Being. It may be the only defiance of the ephemeral.
