And it slips through our fingers

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Sorry Cel but the world is doomed. We'll just be long dead by then.

Thank you to everyone for making such brilliant posts. I have found it very hard until now to jump in with a thought of my own.

Well....it's not really my own. It's pretty much what Lalwende said, albeit twisted slightly and rendered less eloquent.

That being, the diminishing of the world, of a race, of an age, can be compared with the diminishing of a single human life. We have our childhood, we swiftly reach the peak of our physical powers and quite often our happiness; certainly the peak of our hope. Then these slowly decline. We get weaker physically, we stop hoping so much and start looking back much more. We often become more melancholy.

Not everyone, of course, but I think it can be applied to humans generally, at least with some argument.