I am gripped. A 50 knot head wind is powerful enough to make even walking down the street difficult. I am not walking. I am flying. I am in a Cessna 206 with 4 other people a cooler full of meat various duffle bags and backpacks slogging through Lake Clark Pass in October. I am sure death is near but I remind myself that the pilot has almost 45 years of flying experience and I have flown with him in less than favorable conditions more than once. It doesnt help and I struggle to hold on to the contents of my stomach as the plane is thrown around like a leaf in the wind. In a word Dodgy! I am in for an immersion in the world of mass transit and as I contemplate the reason US airways chose to route me from Anchorage to Pheonix to Austin to Dallas to Columbus I smirk and wonder if the money I saved on this flight was really worth it. Probably not, yet here I sit in the Pheonix airport coffee in hand happily blogging away. Things couldnt be all that bad.
I am heading home for a funeral. I have recently come to discover that my brother in law was very ill and over the course of about three weeks lost 35 pounds, his teeth and his life. the circumstances arent really that important. He was 47. Its interesting to view the people of today in designer clothes roaming the airport. The stewardesses hurrying to the next connection with the puppy dog like commuter bags following behind token to the trade of travel. It simply reminds me of this big wonderful breathing moving thing that is the world. How we travel through it, by foot, or plane or car. 150 years ago people were barely mastering the art of mechanized travel up until then people just rode horses or paddeled boats, rode in carriages or on dogsleds. Have we come to take the speed of things for granted? Perhaps its difficult to say.
He was only 47. He had so much ahead of him. Imagine all of the things we are able to see and do by 47 now as opposed to even a century ago. To visit distant relatives now only takes hours and not days. We are fortunate in our advancement. This posting wasnt meant to be gloomy but actually celebratory. Celebrate! Your time is fleeting and there is much to do so lets get to it!
Fleeting is a good title for the space that we find ourselves in when we are mid-flight in an airplane or when we view a life that was short-lived, and perhaps not fulfilled. Fleeting means lasting for a markedly brief time; momentary; fugitive; transient; ephemeral. Glances, even meaningful ones, can be fleeting. Love can be fleeting. Life can be fleeting. The beauty is in each of these little fleeting moments that comprise our lives. Everyday is full of these moments - they are almost like the space between rain drops. It is what we do in these moments, how we perceive these moments, how we perceive ourselves in these moments and how we link together these moments - that determines whether it is a moment short-lived or a moment seized in the wonder and beauty of life - of life's celebration.
ReplyDelete'Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero' – the Latin roughly translates as 'seize the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future'. The original usage from Horatio’s Odes 1.11, translates:
Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what end the gods have granted to me or you. Don't play with Babylonian fortune-telling either. How much better it is to endure whatever will be! Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite — be wise and scale back your long hopes to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have already fled. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.
We can credit this platitude to Horatio. He reminds us that life is fleeting, and so we have to celebrate life's moments as they unfold or as we create them. And I believe that this is the challenge in modern society - how to balance that which we can create and that which we allow to unfold.