Article April 25, 1983 Issue

Beyond fragile, mortal existence ...

SUEN-SZU HUANG

The phone rings .... I hang up, dash downstairs, rush to the emergency room of a hospital just in time to learn of the passing of a friend.

I feel threatened. Suddenly life seems meaningless, certainly short and fragile. My thought tosses and turns and finally stops at the bottom of an imaginary flight of stairs. Each step brings one closer to the top, where maturity and perhaps success, wealth, and fame await. Then down the stairs go to the dark bottom on the other side—to the darkness called death.

This flight of stairs symbolizes mortal life, which has a beginning and an end and is punctuated by a series of various human experiences.

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