What Does It All Mean?

“The present life of man, O king, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of the sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers and a good fire in the midst, while the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of sight into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but what of went before or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.”

This is the image of a man’s life through the thoughts and cognition of Venerable Bede (c673-735), the flight of a sparrow through the warmth and light of a great hall and back into the blizzard has troubled thinkers for centuries. What depresses me is that I don’t eat “supper” in a great banqueting hall, I usually sit in a confined room, on a chair that hurts my bum with it on my lap. As for the sparrow, the most prolific domineers of the sky where I live are Bloody Seagulls! So my updated Bede analogy would be: Life is basically a seagull taking a cumbersome passage through my room at dinner time (greedily swallowing as much as possible on its course) and back out into the putrid effluent of the atmosphere beyond my window where it belongs.

Have been considering forming a new group: The Society for the Pointless Promotion of Pessimism.

2 comments November 23rd, 2007