South America

Japan

In the second week of May 2017 our small group of habitual fellow travellers Craig and Sonia; Wendy and I; took a package introductory tour: Discover Japan 2017 visiting: Narita; Tokyo; Yokohama; Atami; Toyohashi; Kyoto; and Osaka.  

Are we the same person we once were?

Sometimes I recall in horror a remembered faux pas – something I said or did that was really stupid or thoughtless. Perhaps out of ignorance or maybe when I opened my mouth when I should have kept silent. There are some action’s I took that I’m now ashamed of.

Every now and then I find myself saying: ‘oh no!’

And there are some beliefs I once firmly held that I no longer subscribe to. Life and experience and education have taught me how wrong I was when I tarred whole races; or religions; or sexual orientations; with a single brush - not seeing the trees for the forest.

Yet am I really still that young man who’s bedroom pin-board was headed: ‘Never be afraid of admitting you are wrong – it is but saying that you are wiser today than you were yesterday’?

The Prospect of Eternal Life

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west.  And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death.  This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.