POINTS TO PONDER XV

From Reader's Digest:
Contributed by Paul Brooks

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, watched a fall migration of monarch butterflies with a friend in Maine one day toward the end of her life, when she was aware that she had cancer and would probably not return to that spot. That evening she wrote:

"It occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly - for when any living thing has come to the end of its cycle we accept that end as natural. For the monarch butterfly, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course, it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end."