Tag: Aeon.co
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I go, and it is done
What is the meaning of Death; for that matter, what is Death? When I was a very young child, I didn’t understand why my parents were upset when I used to wander off to play on the banks of the fast-flowing river near our house. I realized why they might be concerned when I ventured […]
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Hang our banners on the outward walls
Ever since I was a small child, I have had an aversion to arguments; I have recognized that my opinions can never be imposed by strength. Only by means of vocabularic confusion could I ever hope to win a dispute -and even then, only by quickly withdrawing from the arena of combat. Of course one […]
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Truth is truth to the end of reckoning
Truth is an interesting concept don’t you think? In a way, it is an autological word which often prefers to use itself for its own definition: Truth is, well, Truth; it describes what is… Still, there was a time when I thought I understood it as something else -something more…sacred perhaps. But now I’m not […]
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Adab, more or less
I’d like to think that I am usually polite; that even if I am unhappy with a turn of events, I can control my words, and arrange my outward face. Of course I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that is not always true. Sometimes I can no more control my emotions than a […]
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Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy
I realize how malleable our memories can be; how a passion in our later life can be attributed to a precocious childhood; how we can bend the past like origamied paper. But, short of recognizably dated diary passages, or a still-living family member (whose memory could be equally suspect), there can be no reliable verification […]
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The ceremony of innocence is drowned
Every so often, things are not as they seem. Perhaps that should come as no surprise to an ever-curious septuagenarian, but sometimes I realize I have been misled, lulled into a sense of complacency by the reigning Weltanschauung; or, to be clear, the previous one -the one in which I received my formal education. But […]
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Sifting through the noise
Listening requires special skills which, like muscles, weaken with neglect; they might not always be needed in retirement. The need should be weaker there I imagined -retirement is more transactional, with each of us intent on regaling others with our own contrasts in exchange for hearing, but not necessarily listening, to those of our friends. […]
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God-damned?
Sometimes there are no easy ways to cross a swamp and many of us have chosen to live in areas so removed we cannot even see the marsh; do not understand that it may be difficult for others to reach us; do not care that they may not want to. I have seldom privileged beliefs […]
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Conscience does make cowards of us all
I don’t think I’ve thought of myself as being in a moral quandary for a while now -at least not since I retired, anyway- but I do remember the feeling of opposing forces pulling in different, if not opposite, directions; the feeling that by yielding to one rather than another, there is always a loser; […]
musings on women's health 