The body does not respond the way it once did. We watch the death notices more carefully, and we find ourselves attending more wakes and funerals. We are growing old, and death is much nearer than it was only a year ago. Our lives, which looked so long in anticipation, look very short in retrospect. We accomplished so little, and now it is almost over.
Life is filled with so many senseless events.
Mindless tragedies fill our newspapers every day-airplane crashes, the murder of innocent children, insane terrorism, natural disasters. And much in our own lives seems without purpose or meaning-a rainstorm on a picnic or parade day, a bad cold when we are having a party, a handicapped child, the early death of a parent or spouse, a broken marriage, a car that won't start in the morning, a wrong number in the middle of the night, the loss of savings through inflation or depression, the misunderstandings and needless hurts of family life, the treason of friends, the envy of neighbors. Such tragedies, some large and some very small, seem to be without pattern or intent. Life, too, seems devoid of intent and purpose. Some scientists tell us that the whole universe is merely the result of random chance operating among atoms.