Coming back to life

Coming back to life: A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of this tree, with all bare branches and dead-looking, but now it’s leaves are grown and it’s full again. And it made me think of the idea of death and resurrection, not of this concept in the ultimate sense, but in the more micro, everyday sort of way. An example, maybe you used to love a certain sport or activity as a kid, but now you’re busy and that interest has, in a sense, died. And although it would take a certain effort of the will, you could presumably take the old bike out of storage, or shake the dust off your favorite book and begin reading again, and that personal passion of yours could be reignited and resurrected… But what about the more concrete types of death that we are sometimes faced with? Imagine old age. It doesn’t matter what amount of efforts that we could give to it; we could never will a person younger. When you are old, it is like the branch of your youth has fallen away, and it could never by our effort be brought back. But then again, I would guess that we might all know people, whom although physically old are young in spirit. And this would seem to be a contradiction. Maybe it shows that a person’s inner self is not bound up by the same natural laws, which govern our outside bodies. Within our physical bodies we can develop disease, cause damage to a limb, lose the enjoyment of various recreations, some of which that can be brought back and some of which that can’t. But the inner human spirit, is it beyond the reach of this type of natural, concrete death? And I would say yes. That as long as we are living, we are by obvious definition, alive. And every part of the human spirit is changeable until the point of literal death: if we are fearful, we can be made brave. If we are greedy, we can be made charitable. If we are unloving, we can be made loving. If we are old in spirit, we can be made young.