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BRIGHT YOUNG HANDS

I suppose it has a lot to do with age and its concatenations, I just went from 21 to 61 in what feels like about five years, but this newly attained chronic promontory must be the reason I'm beginning to feel a kind of relief, and a kind of confidence, I guess is the best way to put it, whenever I see a boy or girl who is ten years old or so, just verging on adulthood, new flames from the ancient coals, it's probably like the feeling hard-pressed and worn-out soldiers feel when fresh troops come to relieve them: there in the flesh is a surging font of the very confidence that is beginning to wane in oneself as muscles tire and joints begin to complain, and as the transcendant perspectives afforded at the height of life's experience greatly lessen the importance of so many things once thought to be of the very essence.

There in those fresh and eager faces is living proof that all is not lost, that the immutability fading in oneself has been passed on anew, that it transcends flesh and mirrors the soul; there too is the relief in beginning to accept at last that one's own continuance is not that damned important after all, that what is important has yet to go on, and all at once it is easy to hand it to the hands of these bright young...