"Its slippery like a newborn!"

I remember once in year 9 when we were challenged by our PRS (philosophy and religious studies) teacher to think of an analogy to describe life.

"Life is a roller coaster, there are ups and downs"
"Life is like a mother's hand, nourishing into grown ups"
"Life is like the Hang Seng Stock Exchange - you never know when the bubble might burst"
And my favourite, "Life is like writing with a permanent marker, you can never erase it"

After telling us what seemed like countless of witty and meaningful ones made up by students from the years past, she told us to go away, think about what we - the then-3yr-olds thought life was, summarize it in a single sentence. It had to be original. And boy! it was hard.

I don't remember how I answered this question with some regurgitated analogy found on the web - I didn't even think much about that matter then... At that time I had completely pushed it out of my mind: There were more important things to do; more important people to talk to; important work to complete.

Come today, I don't exactly know why I started thinking about it again today.. perhaps its because the way that these 4 years have seemed such a blurr... perhaps because time is passing by too quickly. But it suddenly struck me how life is like a newborn. Not those nicely dressed-up little dolls we see cosied up in swaths of clothing sleeping in prams; but an actual newborn, unadulterated by the world, just as it is right after birth. Slippery. Red. Exuberant. Flawed but perfect as it is.

Yes, life is slippery like a newborn.

So time is something so intangible, something we never have enough of but we can never do anything to stop it. The youngest heart and the oldest mind both must endure the merciless march of time, progressing forever onward.

All we have is this one life, there’s no going back.

No redos, no continues, no trying again.

This is all we’ve got.

We better make it count......................
lctx.