(We were reminded this week by the death of a former colleague at the age of 44 that life and death are not predictable, not even for those imprisoned and facing capital punishment.  And what if it were?  Dr. Frank Crane ponders—–)

THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE

“There goes a man,” said the physician, “who is under sentence of death.”

“What to you mean?’

“He is in the secondary stages of a disease for which there is no known cure.  He is as sure to be dead or to lose his mind, which amounts to the same thing, as far as the victim himself is concerned, and one of these calamities is bound to occur within six months as the sun is certain to rise tomorrow.”

“Yet he seems cheerful. Why?”

“Because he does not know it.”

There you have the secret of contentment. For you and I, and every man, is under the sentence of death, as well as those marked by a mortal malady or sentenced by court-criminal our court-martial…

Every sunset, every clock-stroke brings us mechanically near the drop. And we know it. And we are cheerful. Why?

Simply because we do not know the date!

IF we knew that it would deaden our days and darken our minds. Just one fact of the future, if its time of happening were to be revealed to us, would paralyze life.

And so you see the falseness of another common notion, that the uncertainty of life is a bad thing. On the contrary, the uncertainty of life is its chiefest charm.

Heaven, which prescribes death, gives us death’s antidote, which is ignorance of death’s time. The sentenced world laughs and plays, drinks deep of dear human love, is busy with business—in fact the whole human comedy is interesting, amusing, and worthwhile just because the time of the certain fall is concealed.