PROTHANASIA

She almost evaporated with ecstasy as she spoke of the latest techno-feat: roses could be made to yield flowers within a period less than a tenth of their natural flowering time.
That would, said she, boost up the floral market.
(Frankly, i shudder at the very idea of associating flowers with the barbaric world of marketing, sales, and commerce.)
Well, the techno-feat should, thought i, consequently boost up the bouquet-and-banquet market, the felicitation-and-obeisance market, and finally the obsequies-and-wreath market.

Yesterday, newspapers showered accolades on a child prodigy, who earned some bronze or silver at an intensely grueling and immensely prestigious international contest on astrophysics, at the tender age of 13.
The news items also carried photographs of the celebrity. Alas, the child hardly looked a child! No innocence, no mischief, no smile; the stiff stature, the starched three-piece suit, the coveted medal hanging down the neck, the thick glasses, and the sickly smile: the poor boy indeed looked a grey emeritus professor. Gosh!

Someone runs (or is made to run) so-many-hundred kilometers at 6, and makes headlines.
Kids crotch dance in the limelight, drive the audience crazy, and are past climacteric before puberty.
Athletes dope themselves, break their own records year after year, dope again till they are found, and then wither away.
Before thirty, professionals are already lonely on the loftiest peaks.

True, most of us are not a child prodigy.
Most of us never get to bask in limelight.
Most of us never break any records.
Most of us never make anywhere near the peak.
But – and not without a streak of envy - most of us do wish we could do all this.
Our envy betrays our discomfiture with our self.

With success saturation well before midway, what does a guy do for rest of the life?
Life no longer grows, it swells.
It no longer flows, just gets scummy.
It no longer smiles, only frowns.
It seeks beauty-parlors.
It needs laughter-clubs.
Having lost himself, the guy goes on world tours in search of opium.
A normal life span feels a bit too long, too boring.
Early death from heart attack or stroke is a nice quick fix.

It’s all hire-n-fire: come on; make yourself useful; work out; work it up; work away at it; stay workable; burn out; and quit.

Have we lost the art of living a simple life at its natural pace?
Where lies the line between prodigy and precocity and progeria* and prothanasia*?

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progeria, premature aging; prothanasia, premature death