Perhaps having already reached a point of physical decline, my next few years will likely be introspective upon one thing: today American life as a fifty.off-year-old could be considered a time for reflection on all the collected wisdom and knowledge of everything I’ve witnessed and concluded. However, I can also see the importance of perspective — since human life haven’t always been so easy — and I realize the coming gradual atrophy is common.

My life is no different than anyone else’s. Without the result of stupid decisions or the influence of terrible outside forces, we all go through the same process of growth and decline, waxing and waning in physical being. There is nothing unusual about that. If anything, the only difference between us is the willingness to address death, contemplate it, and adjust. I only wonder how it is possible, without total social detachment, to demonstrate the deep reflection and constant recalibration that today are the bedrock of my sanity.

The coming years will be my entry into an age that, as a child, I never believed was real, and in later life gradually feared. At this point I don’t really know what that means to me, but I do want to embrace it and continue pushing forward every aspect of our lives. Yeah, I realize the ambiguity in those words — but then again, life is completely uncertain, so why not embrace that sole fact?

Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. He walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.