Man has a seemingly inextinguishable desire to name and categorise all things.
The categories have grown more complex over time - from 'heaven and earth' we have moved to a nomenclature including a 'troposphere', a 'stratosphere', a 'mesosphere' for what is above our heads, and a 'crust,' a 'mantle' and a 'core' for what is below our feet - and we have learned much from them. But all fail to capture the infinite complexity of the things that surround us, and the things that we are.
Some of the simpler categories we still hold dear. Though they leave much out, they speak to a truth that is at once scientific and cultural, but, more importantly, that resonates deep within us.
One such is the division of life into discrete parts: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age.
A list punctuated by birth at one end and death at the other.
Simple words.
But these are the ones we use, consciously or not, to conceive of our personal history and of that of those around us. They are the stages that make a life complete. People are said to have 'died too soon' only when they have failed to reach the fourth and final stage, the one in which one contemplates all that has come before, and the inevitable that lies ahead.
As fluid and evanescent as life may be, it is not quite apt to compare it to a flowing river. If, perhaps, only for symbolic reasons, ages break up the flow, and, quite often, momentous events mark those breaks. Whether we like it or not, in some way or other we all fit the mould.
That is the subject of this theme: what it is like to travel through the ages of life, as so many have done before us, and as so many will thereafter.
Olivier Holmey
London, 14 February 2015
Our selection of poetry, music and art for all five weeks of this theme is available by clicking on the tabs above or through the links below:
I. Week One
II. Week Two
III. Week Three
IV. Week Four
V. Week Five