Pulvis et umbra sumus. We are but dust and shadow (Horace, Odes, 4. 7. 16).

When we’re young, these are but words. However, there’s a world of difference between knowing their meaning intellectually and understanding what they entail emotionally after seeing so many of our family, relatives, and friends grow old and die, as we reflect upon their memory while attending their funerals.

It’s only then when we recall growing up and old along with them over the decades and finally realizing how frail and ephemeral all of us are when we thought we’d be young forever.

It’s a wistful sense of evanescence about ourselves and the world we first came to know sixty, seventy, eighty or more years ago and thought that we and the world as we knew it then would always remain frozen in time, only to see it imperceptibly melting away drop by drop with each passing year.

We can all understand what this means, but unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you cannot feel what it means, nor should you; but be patient, your time will come.

When we’re young and learning the do’s and don’ts of becoming a human being and making mistakes beyond counting they say will make us “wiser,” the world is so new and wondrous that we’re dazzled by the unfolding drama before us as we try to keep the wonder alive of those magical years. It is only with time, however, that we begin to understand how utterly insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things.

Our consciousness begins to change and we become more understanding of human beings, of human weakness and limitations, but most of all the different crosses all of us bear, and not wanting to add any more weight to what anyone else is already bearing.

How many don’t let on that they are carrying these crosses as they do so with a grace that makes you feel blessed and inspired just to be in their presence. These are just one of the many things you notice as you age — things that are among the most precious moments of our three score and ten.

All of us will be gone one day, so we try to tread lightly when interacting with anyone because we’re all in this life together for a brief time and then, suddenly, we’re gone. It’s this dimension of the brevity and fragility of life that is uppermost in the mind of older people as they look at life much differently than they did when carefree and young. It’s a natural and gradual progression that simply comes with the years.

In countries throughout the world up until the 1960’s when the Roman Catholic Church discontinued the celebration of its religious services in Latin and adopted instead the language of that country in which it resided, people used to go to church early on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, “to receive ashes” on their forehead.

As the priest made the sign of the cross on each person, he would quietly say the Latin words: “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris,” or “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return!”

The symbolism of this ancient ritual was to remind the recipient that this is how everyone ends, rich or poor, famous or obscure, by returning to ashes lest they fall in love with the allurements of this world and forget their true home in the next.

Many of them tried, to use another old-fashioned phrase, “to mortify the flesh” by making small sacrifices throughout the days of Lent — not eating between meals, doing without dessert, not eating candy; in short, whatever cost them effort through these small acts of self-overcoming.

Again, the point of doing this was to remind them not to identify with their body, but with their soul, which can be dragged down by the body and lose its way in this world by over-identifying with physical pleasures like eating and drinking and running after the material things of life to the neglect of what they knew was life’s ultimate purpose — their eternal salvation.

Some scholars believe that ancient Greek philosophy influenced much of this Christian distrust of the body, as well as its repudiation of this world. This attitude is conveyed in the Greek maxim “soma-sema” or “The body a tomb,” a tomb that imprisons the soul, which is one’s real essence that strives toward the eternal, but is hampered in its upward quest by the corrupt nature of the body.

This attitude toward the body is reflected in the philosophy of Plato, the Pythagoreans, and the Orphic Mysteries, while others believe that the ultimate source of this thinking may have been India. This idea of the body/soul division, sometimes called “Greek dualism,” has given rise to two different reactions.

The first says that human beings must realize that they are, indeed, composed of both spirit and matter, but that, unfortunately, it’s the physical, the material side of their nature, which is the source of all their problems, and that they must be eternally vigilant in struggling against what were said to be its blind, even evil, impulses because their true selves, their higher and nobler nature, is an expression of the spiritual side of themselves.

Still others maintain that St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), an immensely influential thinker of Early Christianity, may have been largely responsible for incorporating this view of the evil nature of the body into Christianity because of his prior adherence to Manichaeism, which preached this doctrine.

Another view maintains the exact opposite — that it is precisely looking at the human body as evil that has caused the very problems that this attitude sought to cure; and that while human beings are, indeed, composed of spirit and matter, there is nothing evil about the body, and that by bringing the physical side of their nature under control, they are, in fact, “repressing” it, damaging themselves psychologically and emotionally.

Each school of thought is convinced that the other is wrong and marshals an immense scholarship to support its respective claim, and this fundamental difference of opinion explains the different approaches in trying to help people make sense of their lives.

Is there an “M” formed by the creases on both palms of your hands? Well, it used to be thought that those two M’s stood for the two Latin words, “Memento Mori” or “Remember that Thou Shalt Die.” It was supposed to be a constant reminder that someday we shall die and, therefore, to always lead a good life or, to use an old-fashioned phrase, always to be “in the state of grace” should one happen to die suddenly and be worthy of entering heaven.

Frank Breslin is a retired high-school teacher in the New Jersey public school system.