Shadow Of Life Stretches On

Adrian Mills was a man on the hurry: he took every short cut he could take in order to get what he wanted. His neighbors in Brixton Mews knew it well and avoided him. He cheated his way through life and indeed made a great pile of money in his time. Before death came to him he realized all that he had hoarded would only go towards Death Duty. So to avoid paying to the government he put up a Trust that looked after Orphans and protected them from exploitation. The Trust fortunately was run by a group of dedicated citizens and consequently great progress was made in setting so many young on the right path. All those who benefited could thank Adrian Mills whom they never knew. Whenever they set apart time for volunteer work and those who were helped across the globe, showed their appreciation they could say, “Thanks to Adrian we just pass on what we may.” In the Third World the name Adrian Mills came to be synonymous with godly virtues.
While so many were for praising late Adrian Mills a great many, of course children of those who moved out from the squalor of Brixton Mews, had plenty of stories to tell of an ogre by name Adrian. Naturally one might ask, “Will the real Adrian Mills stand up? ” I can only say in conclusion: ‘Don’t waste time.’ The last word on any man or woman is not yet written.
Light And Shadow
An active life is the visible life, where most of us try to make ourselves economically viable by some occupation or other. So we may support a family and make ourselves useful to the society. We have ideas how to go about it and we train ourselves as seriously as an athlete would in order to succeed in our various enterprises.
Why so much of an effort? Because we have competition. Pure and simple. We thus give our ideals shape in order to keep our place in the race. We may not see visions as Theresa of Avila, but more of a challenging kind is before us, of beating back the tyranny of minutes, hours and days, of crippling monotony, like so many beasties trying to wear us down. Such a struggle requires our sweat, tears and blood. We suffer all these so we may live on even though we are made redundant because of old age. One example of this is so obvious: we give our children a good start in life so they may race ahead from where we stopped.
Our life has a shadow that still keeps moving when our substance is all but gone: our children bear proof of it. As much as our handiwork. If not, will the world wonder at that uncommon courage of a Socrates?
benny