Today Maryland repealed the death penalty and Rhode Island
approved same sex marriage. A man killed
himself in a Houston, Texas airport. A gold mine collapsed in the Sudanese
killing scores of people. One World Trade Center in New York had its final
spire put into place, almost twelve years after 9/11..
I guess the old saying about change being the only constant
in life is true. Every thing is continually changing, and there's something indefinable
about passing the half century mark of my life that actually makes me more
aware of change. I am experiencing the first hints of feeling
"out-of-step" with the world, something my grandfather once talked
about. I didn't know what he meant back then, but the first gleanings are starting
to take form in my brain. All of this is slowly ceasing to be my generation's
world. The torch is being passed. I wonder how they will handle the world. With
tender mercies, iron fists, compassion, intelligence?
Once upon a time, my father and I were outside in his yard one summer day and
the conversation turned to time travel. I asked if he could travel to any time
in the history of the world what time period would he travel to? I expected an
answer like ancient Egypt during the construction of the pyramids, but instead
he answered, “I’d want to travel a thousand years in the future. I want to see
what eventually happens to all of this” and he swept his arms in a gesture of encompassing
the world. I looked around and above and
into his eyes, and a spark was fired that referenced my place regarding my morality
and my briefness upon this planet. Twenty years later, that spark is a full blown bonfire. We live in a world of change, both large and small,
knowable and unknowable. And one day, it
will be a world in which I will leave behind an infinitesimal, almost insignificant portion of myself. My mark upon this planet.
And no mark is too small not to count in the
whole of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment