Gold To Mercury

Elements have different names that are assigned based on the number of the protons they have while age is assigned to things based on how long they are around. Unlike elements, we are created and then we are destroyed (according to Dalton's Atomic Theory, respectfully). We are created and we are here to try to live our life to the fullest. Sometimes we forget that one day we won't be here anymore and that there will be a time where we will not physically exist.

During Oliver Sacks last years of life, he reminisces about his past and how ever since he learned about the Periodic Table of Elements when he was eleven, he thought of age as elements. At eleven, Sacks would say, "I am Sodium!" At the time of writing, he says "[he] is Gold," and that on Tuesday he "will become Mercury." Sacks then tells the story about a gift he got for his friend, a sturdy bottle of Mercury, on his eightieth birthday. His friend, however, didn't understand the joke until a couple days later when he sent a charming letter to Sacks. Which he joked and said that he takes a little every day to improve his health. 

Nunc dimittis

—

"I have had a full life, and now I am ready to go"

At the age of seventy-nine, Sacks states he is looking forward to being eighty, "at eighty, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age." Sacks father, who lived to the age of ninety-four said before he passed that the best decade of his life was his eighties. Sacks begins to feel what his father felt at his age, "not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective." When we go outside and the weather is beautiful, isn't it just a great time to be alive? You never know what life will behold for you, even when you become Mercury.