When I arrived at the SLU Pre-funk, still in the mind-manifesting glow of my summer capstone adventure, Moistra and Shaddup Joe were conversing about Bitcoin and floating various strategies to scheme tech-bros out real money by gaming arcane aspects of the virtual currency market.
Now, because I’m something of a Luddite (and no doubt in part due to the aforementioned capstone adventure), I really had no idea what they were talking about until Joe, with his usual bombastic air of authority, explained that it’s a scarcity model that infuses those zeros and ones with value since, after all, anything that’s rare is valuable.
That, I get.
Which is why an evening like last night is priceless.
Sure, the destination was not unprecedented; and yes, of course, several times a year, we find ourselves standing and sitting around a toasty bonfire on a bluff above the Puget Sound with the opportunity to launch glass projectiles at passing trains, but if you take the long view, and consider a whole life, even the traditional conservative estimate of three score and twelve years, and figure, in twelve years of Thursday night rides, let’s be generous and give the spot three times a year, that’s 26,293 days of living divided into a mere 36 such instances (and frankly, I’m sure it’s way less than that, but okay), that comes to mere 0.137 percent of one’s time on earth.
So, there’s about a 1 in a thousand chance that, on any given day you’re alive, you will be afforded such delights as bouncing through forest paths on a two-wheeler to congregate and quaff with friends and acquaintances beneath a rain-cleared sky illuminated by a brilliant quarter moon on an evening so mild that the fire is more for show and kinship than warmth.
Long odds indeed, but as 17th century philosopher Spinoza said, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare;” still, amazingly, it was ours free for the taking.
Now, because I’m something of a Luddite (and no doubt in part due to the aforementioned capstone adventure), I really had no idea what they were talking about until Joe, with his usual bombastic air of authority, explained that it’s a scarcity model that infuses those zeros and ones with value since, after all, anything that’s rare is valuable.
That, I get.
Which is why an evening like last night is priceless.
Sure, the destination was not unprecedented; and yes, of course, several times a year, we find ourselves standing and sitting around a toasty bonfire on a bluff above the Puget Sound with the opportunity to launch glass projectiles at passing trains, but if you take the long view, and consider a whole life, even the traditional conservative estimate of three score and twelve years, and figure, in twelve years of Thursday night rides, let’s be generous and give the spot three times a year, that’s 26,293 days of living divided into a mere 36 such instances (and frankly, I’m sure it’s way less than that, but okay), that comes to mere 0.137 percent of one’s time on earth.
So, there’s about a 1 in a thousand chance that, on any given day you’re alive, you will be afforded such delights as bouncing through forest paths on a two-wheeler to congregate and quaff with friends and acquaintances beneath a rain-cleared sky illuminated by a brilliant quarter moon on an evening so mild that the fire is more for show and kinship than warmth.
Long odds indeed, but as 17th century philosopher Spinoza said, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare;” still, amazingly, it was ours free for the taking.
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