Life Gets Us Ready to Die

Great American writer, William Faulkner, wrote in his book, "As I Lay Dying:" "the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time." American musician and songwriter, Warren Zevon, best known for the 1978 Top 40 hit, "Werewolves of London," released an album in 2000 entitled, "Life'll Kill Ya." The 1943 movie, "The Oxbow Incident," * featured the folk song, "Lonesome Valley," whose composer is apparently unknown, but its movie version has the lyrics, "You gotta go through the Lonesome Valley, you gotta go there by yourself, nobody here can go for you."

Our personal clock ticks away the time... tick, tick, tick. No matter how strong we are, we cannot hold back the time. Tick, tick, tick. No matter how fast we run, time always keeps up until one day, it passes us. Tick, tick, tick. No matter how smart and clever we are, time needs no schools, no teachers, no education to undo our cleverness and to outfox us. Tick, tick, tick. No matter how much we exercise, no matter how much we diet, no matter how much we try to cover or repair the damages of time, we can't halt or completely camouflage the toll time makes us pay for the right to pass. The secrets we hold, the people we have met, the people we have cared about, the people we still care about, the people we haven't told how much we care about them. The older people of our younger days have passed from the scene to make room for us, and now, we are the older people to the young, as time gradually moves them forward to replace us. Our personal clock ticks on, when will it stop? Tick, tick, tick.

* For my article on the movie, this is the link:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-oxbow-incident-vigilantism.html

WORD HISTORY: 
Ready-This word "seems" to go back to Indo European "reidh," which meant, "to ride, to travel" (it is the ancestor of "ride"). From this came Old Germanic "garaidija," which meant, "ready to ride or travel, set to travel;" thus more generally, by extension, "fully in order, set and arranged;" that is, "ready." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "geræde," meaning, "ready, prepared," also "prompt," likely from the notion of "no preparation needed," and "ræde," meaning, "ready to ride, mounted on a horse and ready to ride." These later became one form, "redy," before the modern version. Forms in the other Germanic languages: German has "bereit" ("ready"), Low German "rede" ("ready"), Dutch "gereed" and "bereid" (both mean "ready"), West Frisian "ree" ("ready"), Icelandic "reiðubúinn" ("ready," also in the sense "willing; that is, ready, to do;" the "ð" is called an "eth," and is essentially equivalent to "th." English once used them in the Old English period, a thousand or more years ago), Danish and Norwegian "rede," and Swedish "redo" (all mean "ready"), seem to have been borrowed from Low German, but the Swedish verb "reda," meaning, "to make ready," "apparently" is their own word.