Time On Earth
We are temporal beings in a continuous existence. The life we have sits between that which proceeds us and that which follows. Do we see our life as it truly is and what value do we place on our life if it will always be just a part of time?
Since the last time I wrote to you, I have received a continuous stream of criticism for writing that article. “The world is not ready for you.” Well, the world has borne me to you, so it must be ready as I must be.
Our existence, our time is composed of moments we move from the past and from the future. That which we are was something and will be something again. The more we move to the present, the less we leave in the past and the future. The past rarely concerns us but it should. If we move as much as we can from the past to the present, our children will have no past to draw from, only our past. Consider fossil fuels and ores from the Earth. We presently consume them at an astonishing pace considering the length of history compared to the brevity of the present. It took millions of years to store that energy in fossil fuels and billions of years for those ores to coalesce in the bowels of the Earth.
I heard a man say to me recently “You’re a fool. The world’s coming to an end; get what you can while you can while you can.” As I like to say, he’s not wrong. The world is coming to an end. The question is the timeline of that end. Everything we do in this life affects the past and the future. Is there a sufficient trade-off from the life that we are leading to justify what we are consuming? Is the past we consume and the future we starve worth this present time?
Well, ask yourself, how happy are you?
Does the world seem mad to you? It does to me.
I’m not saying that life is not beautiful, I think it is. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the material possessions I have, I do. I’m just beginning to see their true cost. I fear for my children and those few I love.
We have come to accept tanned, smoggy skies instead of pure blue, green water instead of crystal and the brown and burnt instead of the verdant green. The exchange is the shiny, temporal life that we have; alive on our eyes in artificial color but killing our world. It is an illusion that it is more beautiful and that we sacrifice everything and gain. If it still seems beautiful to you, let me make it ugly once and for all: we are feasting on the flesh of our ancestors and the flesh of our children.
To those who say this world is coming to an end soon, I say three things: I hope you just have not seen other ways. Second, if you have seen them and choose this same path, you are a coward. Third, if you will not turn away in your gluttony and greed, you deserve the name flesh-eater, cannibal.
So what then. If we are not the sum of our material possessions or the gain from the transformation of the past and the future, if we are not this, not these actions, what are we, what is the value of our lives?
We simply are, we illuminate our lives, we think, we learn, we grow as all nature does. We are the light of the universe and the soul of God. We are not the wheel of industry or of assumed progress.
Let me be the first under that wheel, so that it may slow and turn.