Page 43 - The Irony Board

Into the Body

On aging

Would you rather
Wrinkle like a raisin
Smiling ever sweeter,
Or shrivel like a shoe
Left too near the heater?

The ironies of entropy in the human life cycle tend to follow the
proverb, “too soon we get old, too late we get smart.” The
coincidence of diminishing capacity and increasing knowledge seems
wasteful from the viewpoint of optimal performance, but makes
sense in the context of social division of labor and traditional
cultural continuity. Those who do not grow old gracefully are caught
in a cognitive dissonance distorting their self-perception.
Both raisin and ruined shoe are exposed to a period of desiccating
heat; while the former maintains and concentrates its essence during
a slow and careful course of dehydration, the latter loses its
complexion overnight, a victim of casual neglect. One increases in
value; the other decreases—totally. Couched as a question, the poem
leaves no rational alternative to the path of the raisin. Of course,
many people do follow the way of the shoe, burning themselves out
prematurely.

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