Lifelong Tales

Getting ] to the bottom [ old

Getting old only has meaning if we can stay old and never dies, but everybody deserves a death: one’s death.

This is small riddle that is told, if I may say so, in the North, there where the North ends, and where place exists in which the big seas met.

A certain day, a boy was playing along the beach – in the place where the seas met –, making holes in the sand, and trying to fill them up with the water of the seas. Nearby was passing a knight that stayed astonish with what the boy was doing. Addressing to him, he said: «What do you think you are doing? Do you expect to fill up that hole with all the water of the seas?» The boy looked at him and said: «I don’t expect anything; I just throw water in to the hole, without care if the hole has a bottom or if is bottomless.» Without understanding a word or trying to, the knights speed up asking: «Do you think I that there is bottom – in this place where the seas met – so I can cross to the other edge?» «Of course – said the boy –, silly of you, the seas have bottom». The knight start to cross the place where the seas met and seeing that was sinking said to the boy: «You told me that the seas had bottom so I can cross them! And now I’m sinking!» The boy rapidly agues: «And they have, you just didn’t get there yet».

The bottom – getting old – will be always and forever more a «you just didn’t get there yet».