A man has seven hours to live.
His first hour is spent in ignorance. It doesn’t matter whether it’s blissful or tortured, whether he’s left alone or abused; all he can think is¾this is the world. If he feels like singing, he sings; if wants to weep, he weeps. He accepts everything with equal measure.
In his second hour, the cock crows and tells him¾you are the world and everything¾in earth, the heavens and the infernal depths¾revolves around you. You’re the emperor, the devil; you’re free.
The third hour he’s a puppy, running after everything that moves or has color, playing in everybody’s sandbox, stealing other puppies’ toys.
The fourth hour he struts on the stage of himself, accumulating women, titles, goods, adding them to the house on his back, encased in cars which protect him from wind and silence.
By the fifth hour, the first stab of mortality hits him. He feels the weight on his back. The cock crows a different tune and tells him he hasn’t done anything¾each beast, human, each object that exists or has ever existed or will exist is the center of the world and all revolves around all in endless time. He panics like a cornered beast and changes wife, car, house and job.
By the sixth, he’s put panic where it belongs¾buried deeply in some euphemism. He’s learned to be silent about everything important, he speaks only soothing words. According to the tradition of his fathers, he names this practice wisdom.
In his seventh hour, he chuckles to the insights of golf and tosses back beer that tastes like carbonated urine, while half the world starves to sustain the course he’s just completed. He lives again in ignorance, but this time because he’s too blind to see the world or himself. Without even knowing it, he attained his highest spiritual state in his first hour, before he began climbing his little hill of illusion. The young scorn him¾they’re closer to the memory of what’s real.
If he’s lucky, the cock crows a third time soon and non-existence rapidly consumes him. If he isn’t, the world is forced to spend another few hours listening to his slobbery memories.
There’s only one way to get through this mess. Love the woman of your youth. Fear the forces that raise and destroy love and life. Know that you, everything you’ve loved and fought for, every work of beauty, each word of truth, will be forgotten, and all your hours will be like a face drawn in the sand on the edge of the sea.
So spoke St. Solomon in the dooms of time. Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.
