Those who love life the dearest can let it go of it the easiest. Those who embrace life like a bewitching mistress can bid farewell to it with the fewest regrets. Those who have been to Rome and Paris and Rio de Janeiro do not yearn undyingly for an encore visit. Those intrepid souls who have run with the bulls at Pamplona aren’t scared shitless by a docile steer stanchioned in a livestock barn at the local county fair. Such is the bizarre paradox of living: The harder you have loved, the easier it is to say goodbye to that temptress while, conversely, those who have lived life with undue caution and treated it like a fragile ornament find it most difficult to confront death and are terrified by the mere thought of their imminent demise. Once you’ve eaten all the way through a luscious apple or nearly all the way through it, throwing away the leftover core is not particularly difficult. But, on the other hand, if you never took a gigantic chomp out of the tantalizing fruit to begin with and it therefore still appears (and no doubt is) pristine…..???
Fred's Soapbox 