Death, grasshopper, Death.
Death, Dear Teacher? What mean'st thou?Come, grasshopper, sit on yon log whilst I -- no, not that log, grasshopper, THAT log. THAT log.What, this one?No, not THAT one -- why would I ask you to sit way over there?! Over here, grasshop-- no! not on that log either! -- Oh, just sit down somewhere on this silly mountaintop! Honestly, grasshopper, you would try the patience of a saint with your awkward bumbling!I kneel in abject self-loathing, Dear Teacher.Oh, you kneel in nothing of the kind! Now, chin up! You know very well that I like you very much -- nay, you're my best student, if only at the end of the day, as our British gurus like to say -- but you really must get yourself together, man. You've no idea how difficult it is for me to remain stony and philosophically impassive with you bumbling around me like Inspector Clouseau of the Parisian surete! It's like warily watching a bee at a picnic and being forced in spite of oneself to engage in morbid speculation about where the insect will next alight. Indeed, one is very tempted right now to haul off and swat you one with the nearest available manuscript! (Speaking of which, I've got a thick copy of Plato's Republic here inside my cloak, so you'd better mind your p's and q's today, mon cher student.)Sorry, Dear --Silence! I am about to be profound.About death, you mean?Yes, about death, I mean! Jeepers, grasshopper, will you let a fella speak!Sorry, O Great One.I'm sorry, too: I lost it there, I'm afraid. Hold on a minute while I resume my customary sangfroid:Oh, yeah, like in those makeover shows! Precisely.Like 10 Years Younger on the Discovery Channel or whatever.Indeed.Where a woman -- it's usually a woman -- is tired of looking, say, 45 years old, and so they make her look 35 years old, thanks to a bunch of cosmetic surgery and stuff.Bingo, grasshopper: You have hit the nail on the philosophical head, as we gurus like to say.Yeah, but what about these shows? What's wrong with them?What's wrong with -- (Tsk-tsk, what's wrong with them, he asks!) Why, they assume that aging, the most natural thing in the world, is something to be embarrassed about -- Ah!As if no one could make a bigger mistake in this world than to admit that they, personally, are even subject to the scythe of time. What, them, subject to time?! Don't be silly! Yes, all their forebears may have been merely mortal, but they didn't know better. They didn't have reality shows to help them toe the progressive line viz longevity. Ah!It's as if the biggest embarrassment on earth is to evince signs of mortality.Ah!Which makes one think, grasshopper: If we living human beings feel so embarrassed to be, say, 60 or 70 years old, think how mortified the dead must feel to be 200, 300, 800, and even 1000 years old. No wonder there are so few ghosts that are seen in one's everyday life: they realize that they have gone beyond the pale in terms of the aging process and should therefore spare our chronologically rarefied modern sensibilities by remaining out of sight, limiting themselves to such auditory manifestations as making floorboards creak and rapping on tables during a seance. After all: If 21st-century man is horrified merely to see the bags under grandma's eyes, how absolutely disgusted they must be to contemplate the bone-dry vacuity of their distant ancestors:I get it, master.Are you sure? I was being rather profound this morning, I'm afraid.No, I got it: Death is natural and so it's odd that modern culture gets so freaked out by it -- indeed, they can't even abide the memento mori of an old face!By George, I think the grasshopper has got it!It's like Julius Caesar said, teacher, in the Shakespeare play....Indeed?Yes: The grasshopper shoots, the grasshopper scores!Not to worry, though, master: I am not afraid to recognize the reality of aging and its inherent implication of eventual death.That's my grasshopper!For instance, when I look at you, I am not put off in the slightest by the fact that you are clearly a septuagenarian. I know that aging is natural, after all.Septuagenarian?! I'll have you know that I'm not a day over 55, young man!Sir, I --Ahem. Not that it would matter, of course, if I were a septuagenarian. Er, but we philosophical types respect truth above all things.Oh? Yes, so that's why I was so startled when you misstated my age like that. I see, teacher. Now come, let us go back down the mountain together, now that I have held forth so dramatically on the subject of aging.