Loss, Continuity and Renewal

Early in the morning today in my bathroom, I heard the birds sing. These were likely the same songs I heard when I was 15; and possibly when I was 25; and always around this time in the morning. Then I suddenly realized that though the song was the same, it could not have been the same bird singing when I was 15, then 25, and now at 35 years old. It would seem that while I was oblivious to the relatively slow passage of my mortality, many generations of birds have passed. The children of the birds I heard when I was 15 were carrying on the same song.

Upon reflection, the sense of continuity for the birds is startling when compared to our much more protracted, profound and complex--though also much threatened--version in human societies.