Kodokushi

I heard this story on NPR and it caught my attention.  It is a haunting story in its own way.  It says so much about opportunities lost, about what happens when we make decisions which limit us instead of expanding our horizons.
http://www.marketplace.org/2016/01/25/world/robots-or-immigrants
I'd rather be writing about politics or publishing my next blog post of physics which is something of a shocker, but instead, I'm going to talk about this story.
LONELY DEATH, what a very post world war II Japanese concept.
But I understand this from a very personal level.  We all die alone to one extent or another, but some of us live our lives alone.
I think about the self imposed exile in my own life.  There is little to be said for it, the melancholy of dying alone.  For lonely death isn't the instant between life and death, it is the time between being born and death and the line that gets shorter with each day spent.
Every day the period between life and death gets shorter, it never lengthens.
Every missed opportunity is so precious.  I think about that when I think about the decisions that were made and what they mean and why they mean what they do.  This alone bears consideration and perhaps is the cup of tea that opens volumes, but I don't have time for volumes this morning.
At the same time, I don't think one should worry about lonely death.  The better word is meaningful life, something that also gets shorter with each passing day, and something that probably appears in the lexicon of Japan, if not post wwII than before.
I hold onto my loves and passions as tightly as I can, so that each day, no matter how lonely or foolish or foolishly lonely is not altogether lost.  And I question every decision that took me the wrong way, that takes me the wrong way, that cuts off critical moments, that can never be captured, that separates me further from my goals and aspirations.
But every day is lost, carved into the permanence, the indelible nature of the past (and the future if you buy into physics).
Happy life, full life focus on the present, lonely death only looks at the end.  No matter how we die, let us try to live in the interim.