Life Flight
The age of life flight has begun. In the midst of looking away, have you avoided noticing this too? At the very least, I hope you picked up on my slant rhyme. Oh, life flight!
Lord, avoidant as I am, from the outset, let me confess that I am guilty too. When we delay too long in getting on with our life path, what we are really doing is creating a diversion to allow our spirit to slip away unnoticed. Oh body that has become a spiritual decoy, what concrete possibilities we feign and feign until the escape becomes irrecoverable. Oh youth that attaches itself to nothing in the end, rises finally as haze, harboring no chance of precipitation.
Why this flight from the most essentially human? Why this flight from our existential core? Do we conceive of reality as a neighborhood heading in the wrong direction, so we flee to safe abstraction? (Words, words, words are a kind of abstract suburbs! Let me confess my guilt again!)
We may be fleeing from today, yes, but that doesn’t mean we’re heading towards the future in any meaningful sense either. How could we, we’re hardly having children anymore! And by not taking on this most time-honored of responsibilities, we’re putting ourselves at higher risk of flying off! Of losing sight of ultimate reality! And, granted, sometimes it’s a risk worth taking if you’re someone capable of exceptional creation in other realms. But, oh, how often this kind of subjective genius is a step away from objective madness!
To raise a family is to cement your foothold in life, binding yourself to its meaning and fencing its play area for abstract concepts and pursuits. Such binding is an impediment in youth and, for some, even in early adulthood, but as we age, we tend to lose the natural youthful self-centeredness that keeps us more firmly entrenched in life. Oh anchoring passions of childhood and adolescence! But as we age, we feel less deeply; the world begins to lose the novelty of its exciting hold…long, long before we ultimately expire into total idea.
But don’t fret, this incoming age of abstraction is part of a grander plan. How beautiful it is to emerge on the other side of egocentric youth (and youth should be egocentric to a significant degree; to find yourself, you actually have to spend time looking for yourself and yourself alone) and reach an age where living for our personal selves is no longer the goal.
Oh, once the mountain of selfhood has been scaled, we still have far to go, but this downhill portion requires less exertion. That being said, we’re also more likely to lose our balance on the descent. And how much more dangerous it is to do so when headed in this more precarious direction, one slip leading to a far greater fall! Oh steepness, here exactly is where we who’ve scaled ourselves need the weight of increased responsibility to firm up our footing for our hike’s completion. And what a beautiful hike it is and will continue to be, so long as we keep our feet firmly planted on the sloping ground!
Oh friends, to choose life flight is to deny yourself your rightful and joyful homecoming at the base!