NO NEW THING UNDER THE SUN

When you think you’ve thought of something no one else has ever thought of before, think again.

Dreading approaching old age, I thought how short the span is when we are totally in control, at the peak of our health and abilities.  Babies are helpless and gradually grow and learn skills.  In old age, we begin to lose these skills as well as our hearing, sight, balance, knees, hips, back, and memory.  In apprehension, I wrote:

THE BRIEF APEX
The very young are helpless and powerless;
The very old are helpless and powerless;
Progressing or regressing.

Both basically dependent.
Only smack-dab in the middle

Of a life span
Are mortals in a
Position of power
And total autonomy:
The blessed brief apex.

“See here, my girl,” Dr. Archie says to Thea in The Song of the Lark, “take out the years of early childhood and the time we spend in sleep and dull old age, and we only have about twenty able, waking years.  That’s not long enough to get acquainted with half the fine things that have been done in the world, much less to do anything ourselves.  I think we ought to keep the Commandments and help other people all we can; but the main thing is to live those twenty splendid years; to do all we can and enjoy all we can.”

Twenty years?  I thought it was five minutes before the decline begins.  A Wondrous Five-Minute Apex! 

Nevertheless, it’s the same idea.  And Willa Cather thought of it before I did and someone probably thought of it before she did!

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

--Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)

 The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
--Ecclesiastes 1:9 King James Version