There’s a wonderful feeling that comes with stepping outside into the cool of the evening after a hot day. There are a lot of little things that go toward making life pleasant if a person has been lucky in their circumstances. Living past middle age into one’s sixties and seventies is
a great blessing, and while there
may be pain associated with such longevity, most people would accept the trade-off. Asking for more life is almost too much. There are others waiting.
In the Native American cultures of North America, everything is living and everything eventually returns into the cycle of life when it dies, including people. In Old World cultures, and particularly those of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, almost everything is regarded as dead or inert, and when people die their passing has finality. No one in either culture knows for certain what happens after death, but it seems evident to some people that
in a living world where a person is one part joining a river flowing to the sea, there is less terror in death, and more an acceptance of it as a metamorphosis into another part of life.
— Izzy