What are you human life?!.Saint Colombanus.

       

Saint Colombanus.

          Human life, fragile and marked for death, how many have you deceived, beguiled, and blinded? While in flight, you are nothing; while in sight, you are a shadow; while you rise up, you are but smoke. Every day you depart and every day you return; you depart in returning and you return in depart­ing, different ending, same beginning, different pleasure, the same passing, sweet to the foolish and bitter to the wise. Those who love you do not know you, and those who condemn you really understand you. Thus you are not true but false; you pre­sent yourself as true but prove yourself false. 

          What are you then, human life? You are the wayfaring of mortals and not their liv­ing; your beginning is in sin and in death your end. You would be true if the sin of the first human transgression had not cut you short so that you became unsteady and mortal and marked all who tread your way for death. And so you are the way that leads to life, but not life itself, for you are a true way, but not an open one: brief for some and long for others, broad for some and nar­row for others, joyful for some and full of grief for others, but for each and every one, you hurry on and cannot be called back. A way is what you are, a way, but you are not evident to all. Though many see you, few understand that you are indeed a way.