Movement

There comes a time when you come to realize that you’re no longer (if you ever were), the lead character in your own life’s story.  

And that’s okay.

Like Nick Carroway in The Great Gatsby or Samuel Johnson’s Boswell, you recognize there are characters and events whose larger-than-life status is larger than your own life and that your role, therefore, is to stand in the wings observing while they take center stage as the drama—and comedy, as well—unfolds.

It’s like communing around a fire that keeps burning hotter and brighter with the addition of one after another larger and larger log.  It may be slightly uncomfortable to see how it continues to grow, but, on the other hand, the good news is that you get to bask in its glow and be warmed by its heat, despite the overwhelm.

As you settle into a more comfortable existence by the wayside, there are those in the center who are still in earlier stages of life’s adventure; they’re the ones who have all the best lines of dialogue and whose aspirations for whatever comes next keeps amusing.  You tag along for the ride knowing full well you needn’t push for any particular destination; that’s going to be decided upon by those who prefer, at this time, to be well out in the front.

Our pioneer ancestors made it all the way west on the continent before turning back east a bit.  The railroads followed, crossing mountains and prairies to the sea.  Those who told that story may have lived it somewhat vicariously, but lived it nevertheless, they did.  To be part of something bigger than oneself is to be bigger than oneself, even if oneself is a smaller portion of that bigger thing.

Right?

Gathering, then disbursing is the way of the world.  Everything arises, then passes away.  Here today, gone tomorrow, then who knows?  

Maybe tomorrow back here, today somewhere else.

Dogs bark; caravan moves on.

 

Plenty

The simple pleasure of riding your bike around town with a group of friends to congregate at several outdoor locations for refreshment and conversation requires, when you stop to think about it, a mind-boggling array of contributions from Mother Earth and your fellow human beings, starting (to pick a somewhat arbitrary starting point) with someone somewhere (no doubt underpaid, exploited, and subject to dangerous working conditions) extracting iron ore from the earth’s crust; someone else somewhere else (in no doubt equally awful circumstances) mining coal underground; groups of workers (hopefully unionized) working blast furnaces in huge factories to combine those raw materials into blocks of steel which someone else (also, let’s hope, unionized) runs through a machine to pierce and draw into hollow tubes, for an artisan in a factory in Taiwan to braze into a beautiful diamond-shaped frame that another skilled laborer paints and decals before boxing up and shipping in a giant container ship halfway around the world to an independent company where a reasonably well-paid employee (barely scraping by because they live in one of the most expensive communities in the nation) unboxes and installs a few parts also manufactured on the other side of the planet, then re-boxes for shipment via eighteen-wheeler truck some 1200 miles north, so it can be unpacked and taken into a home basement to be turned into rideable work of art thanks to precision components from all over the globe (and a beautiful bag manufactured right here in our fair city); and that doesn’t even begin to include all that goes into the clothes you’re wearing including the wool shirt whose wearing depends on the contribution of sheep, sheep-shearers, sheep-dogs (one assumes), garment workers, and a person selling stuff out of their attic on eBay, not to mention everything involved in all that concrete for a 10-story parking garage, plus whoever fabricated the aluminum cans with that delicious cold beer made by more humans and more nature; wow, thanks!