Our Interval

From author AC Grayling, in The Good Book … “A human life is less than a thousand months long. The wise are those who multiply their months by endeavour, living many lives in the fullness of one life. For we are everywhere under sentence, but with an indefinite reprieve: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more.

Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, some in art and song. The wise see that our great chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as much as possible into the given time. Passion may offer a quickened sense of life, may give the ecstasy and the sorrow of love. To burn always with this hard and gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”

There is not much more I can add. In fact, I pray that I can look at this passage again and again, somehow internalize it even now in the September of my years. I pray that I can have my children understand that, too often, I was not truly in control of my interval. Too often I did not put as much into … or get as much out of … my given time.

This is hard truth and yet a wonderful way to think about life: the human life is less than a thousand months long. How are we spending those months, those weeks, those days, those hours … all precious, and too few if we fail to make them count.

Reading these passages, I realize something new now. I write more so that my time will count more … it is a passion of mine, to leave my mark in words. I will never know if it was enough but the value is in the trying to expand that interval, to ask that interval to outlive me, to teach even when “my place knows me no more.” I write for me and for you … and especially for my children.