Life is wasted on humanity.

It seems that life has been wasted on humanity.

We were out walking the other day.
We saw two adults hauling a radioflyer behind them as they walked the river trail in downtown Bend, OR.

Perhaps it would be more revealing to suggest that the radioflyer was essentially a regal litter and the parents were the faithful servants (read slaves).

Anyway, atop the vehicle was the infantile emperor [of the household] sucking down a juicebox while simultaneously smashing goldfish into his mouth as fast as his teeny tiny hands allowed.

One of my walking partners keenly noted that we, as humans, are largely unable to appreciate the stages of our own life.

I think that's really true. Children haven’t the trying experiences of life lived to appreciate the ease of their life. Adults tend not to appreciate any of the good things in their life as they struggle toward an undefined and unreachable success, or at least a fleeting contentment, in their career and in their family (difficult things are always most consuming). And the elderly often don’t appreciate, or don’t get a chance to appreciate, the counsel of their years as their bodies slowly fail them.

It also seems that we cannot really change this no matter our efforts just as wisdom isn’t a decision, you don’t know who you are but who you’ve been, and you only see the younger version of yourself in the mirror.

What we can do is spend time with children, adults and the elderly throughout our life in an attempt to appreciate the various stages in which others live. (What really seems to be the case, then, is that we need each other. We need to live with one another because it is only in relationship that we appreciate what we had, what we’ve got and what’s ahead.)

Seek contentment in this pursuit of communal life well lived.