There are times in life when you are forced to face your mortality. More often than not, they are funerals. Funerals often remind me of a pilgrimage of sorts, where the family who have scattered to the corners of the earth make their way back to where it all began to pay homage to what was and never will be again.
I find that I am most selfish and most empathetic at funerals. I cry more so for those who are left than those who are gone. I feel their pain.
My selfishness is the time I spend contemplating my own existence. The sheer pain of knowing that I can never go back is truly terrifying. The childhood that I remember, filled with horses, fighting, the farm, snow drift fortresses and afternoons developing some serious Nintendo-thumb are gone. They only exist in my memory. Perhaps this is why elderly people are often ready to die - the world they know is more in their memory than in reality. Perhaps that is the most fundamental shift that defines adulthood. Perhaps being in your "prime" is where the amount of your life that exists in memory and the amount of your life that exists in reality balance out. You have experienced enough to be well-practiced, but are not stuck in the haze of memory.
I am sad. It will pass, but truly, things will never ever be the same.
As for articling, I'm getting better at this whole lawyer thing each and every day.
