The Ephemerality of Life.
Greetings friends! Welcome to a brand new day. I hope you guys had a blissful night rest. Before I prepare and go to church this Sunday morning, I want to share with you the Ephemerality of Life and also urge all my steemit colleagues to work hard to achieve success and their goals when they are strong and agile.
If you are over-60, you can't argue anymore that life is fleeting. Sixty may not be long enough; it is not short either. But you can argue about the ephemerality of life- for you do not own anything forever.
That car, that house, that money, that jewelry, that gold, indeed that life that you think is yours, you are just a custodian of it. Sooner or later, they will not longer belong to you. That energy, that strength, that whole body of which you are so proud will wilt away and you will climb back down.
I read a report from The Guardian newspaper of June 1988, the Tyson/ Spinks fight in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Tyson of that time - 21 years old or so - was a ferocious destroyer of ferocious destroyers. Sportswriters marveled at Tyson's speed and strength - for a heavyweight boxer. The steel-like muscles; the circumference of his neck relative to his body - Tyson was a monster.
Heavyweight boxers who put the fear of God in lesser mortals fell at Tyson's feet like ninepins. And they all fell fast - most within the first three rounds.
Michael Spinks, a ferocious boxer himself, fell twice within the 91 seconds that the fight lasted. Tyson seemed invincible, crushing everyone in his weight category.
Then came a relatively unknown Buster Douglas who withstood Tyson's fusillade of killer punches to put Tyson down on the canvas and out in Round 10 in 1990. Nobody had ever taken Tyson to Round 10. The armor of invincibility was shattered. So, Tyson was not god after all!
I watched 58 years old Mike Tyson vs 27 years old Jake Paul the other day. It's instructive what I saw. For me, as someone who watched the televised video when Tyson destroyed Spinks in 1988, I had many things going on in my head as I watched him struggle to maintain the basic, fundamentals of boxing.
Yes, he still appeared menacing, but he was now tentative, slower, much - much slower, weaker, dulled reflexes - compared to Paul. And indeed, compared to the Mike Tyson of June 1988.
The instruction for me is that life is ephemeral; that I should not mock the old or the infirm. I already know that what I did effortlessly in my 20s require a lot more effort when I'll be 60 years old.