Staving Off The Night...

Our world is changing...

For good or ill, I have not the insight or the arrogance to say. Change for the sake of change is simply foolish, but then so is complacency for its own sake. While most of us have a desire to fight shifts in the political, cultural, physical and personal landscape, such shifts are inevitable. Nothing, except extinction, can really stop it. Fear usually stems from the fears of change. For in that fear lies the deepest fear of all: loss... loss of life, property, love... self. Fear is unknown, and that is simply why so many fear the night, the primeval unknown. And the future? The ultimate unknown. Hence the debates, some civil, some outrageous, about futures we can and cannot control. In truth, while we say we control our own destiny (oft cliched thanks to sporting events), only the present moment is under our direct control. That is the choice we have... the only choice. If in that moment, the future changes, well... so be it. Such becomes the nature of our existence along the roads we travel, literally and metaphorically. The Holmesian mirror of hindsight can temper new choices, open up new pathways, but in the end, the speed at which present and future collide can overwhelm even the most logical and stoic of philosophers just as it blinds almost every romantic... and most of us in-between. Change... change is our blessing and curse... one of many unique gifts, this capacity of will. Certainly not our greatest gift (in my rather minority opinion), but good enough at times for us to perceive a glimmer of the future hidden in the depths of the past.

In closing, I can only offer my own hopes... in the best way I can. I had written the following several months ago for reasons that matter little now, except one. It is all I can do to help stave off the night...

'The path we walk is lined with the voices of the distant past, our own past, the present, and a future which conceals itself until it merges with the present. Those voices are the words of time. They are the rocks we stop and pick up and examine along the way, a seashell that might be more enduring than another, a glint of starlight dancing upon calm waters, or the gentle calling of the wind from a distant, verdant shore. As we walk, we can choose to leave our own words for time to hear, for the posterity of those that might decide to pick you up one day and see how extraordinary you were to generations hence. Our legacy is not the visceral monuments of our arrogance and perceived greatness, but in what we carry with us... what is unique in all of us.'

The world is changing... and that is well.

C.