Life is very much like a book. Opening the front cover of that book represents birth. The following pages are the adventures and nuances of a life yet to be lived. Turning the last page, and closing the book’s back cover are a metaphor for the end of life. This is powerful symbolism; an image that is clear to everyone and repeated often in poems, songs, movies, and yes, in books.
And yet, this vivid imagery is limited by it’s very nature. When you pick up a book, it is a finite thing – the content of the book is fixed and scribed onto the pages between the covers. The story therein is constrained by the size of the type, spacing of characters, and dimension of each page. The narrative is limited to the space between the covers, which is always just enough.
Life just isn’t like that. When we open our books for the first time, the pages are all blank. We can’t even write the first few chapters ourselves; we need to give co-authoring credits to our parents and family. As we age and mature, we start to take over the direction of the story, either by our action or inaction, though usually with a liberal sprinkling of both.
If we approach life with a sense of wonder and adventure, we excitedly anticipate what the next page of the story might bring. A life of drifting and inaction tends to make one dread the next page. Going back and re-reading a few previous chapters is always a good idea, to re-celebrate joys, or review poor choices and make some editorial changes for future chapters.
As our lives wind down, and our bodies start to break down, the reader may start to realize the incredible circle that life becomes. We finish our books with a few chapters that again require co-authoring. Perhaps because the writer has become too frail. Or perhaps because there needs to be an unbiased post script commentary on the quality of that life.
The only thing certain is that the book of ones life is never closed. The back cover meets the front cover; we end where we started. From nothing to nothing. And whether you believe in an afterlife, or simply that our bodies decay and we become the source of nutrients for a new form of life, we start again at the beginning, and the circular book of life goes on.
Weak uninteresting drivel. An uninspired theme that vacillates between first and third party narration - all of which is boring. Let's hope the next story is better.
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