LETTER TO THE FUTURE
Okay, you’re here. The odometer has turned except this time it’s the calendar, and there’s a new year. So what? I say, as time just moves along. Of course, time and everything else moves on. We all move on, whether we want to or not.
For me, the hourglass is emptying. I know it but wish it weren’t. As time hurries by, I realize I will be around for less time. Being an octogenarian, I have already had more time than most. I’m selfish, though. I want more and more time but then I ask why. What is it about me that doesn’t want to leave? After all, aging is slowly ruining my body and slowing my mind. I’d thought even the latter was inevitable but perhaps not. When I watch Noam Chomsky who’s in his nineties, I think, God, he looks decrepit, beyond old. But his mind is still brilliant. I’m so glad he’s around. Too bad not enough people listen to him. The media does that, manages to trash someone so that only those who want to understand can appreciate. I guess he says what no one wants to hear.
Or like those two famous men of peace who died in recent years so their voices are silenced, but not their messages. Messages like theirs can both influence and last if they are able to be heard. Perhaps I should say if they are permitted to be heard.
Archbishop Tutu, that dear wonderful man was one of those unforgettable people who radiated peace. He was exactly my height. I know because I spent time with him. His highly embroidered religious garments seemed to hold him upright. His message, one of love even for the enemies who surrounded the Cathedral in Jerusalem that snowy Christmas evening. And yet, that wise little man who was filled with honesty and dismay at the discrimination and apartheid that he witnessed in Palestine, which he said was worse than anything he ever experienced or saw in South Africa was also, a true to a man of peace, concerned for the pain that the occupiers had seething inside themselves as well as for the poor Palestinians who experienced unbelievably horrendous and dreadful conditions daily and for many, many decades. It was interesting to see Archbishop Tutu go from praying for those suffering throughout the world to displaying hints of a delightful sense of humor. In the presence of this special man, people felt immediately accepted, valued and very much at ease.
Thich Nhat Hanh was another one of those special people who exhibited peace. I never met him, but I was at his Deer Park Monastery in Escondido with two of my friends who were ordained by him. It was there that I learned to walk mindfully, so slowly it reminded me of practicing for a wedding. But I wasn’t there for such an occasion. In fact, it was in that spiritual place that I had my head shaved by my friends and Vietnamese nuns softly chanting. Illness and chemotherapy preparing me for the event where I learned something about mindfulness, about living in the moment, for the moment.
Life is like that, moments indescribable that pass so quickly they almost aren’t remembered at the time. How are some chosen to be tucked away and then treasured, taken out for sustenance, for comfort? I don’t know, but moments are. They just are.
That’s what a new year will bring. Moments that pass too quickly but, in retrospect, make life interesting. That little girl holding a long-stemmed red rose in the café in a back alley in Cairo is with me years after I glimpsed her. Why do I keep seeing her little face next to her worn-out father who was smoking shisha, drinking tea and watching a football game on a battered black and white television? What happened to her? Did I see myself in her? Are our memories just collections of seeing ourselves in others? In others that I remember from years ago, from yesterday? Perhaps they are like memorable photographs that when people refer to them by name they are seeing again with their eyes as a visual memory and experiencing on a deeper, more emotional level. Perhaps what begins as a visual memory, touches on a multiplicity of levels, one especially on an aesthetic level.
What will happen to any of us in this new year, in the unknown future? Change is inevitable, of course, although we don’t like to think it is. What change will come, good or bad, no one knows although we like to think we do.
Curiosity didn’t kill the cat: it brings a sense of wonder, I suppose. Whatever comes will be dealt with. I’ve done it before and will do it again. I would rather things be more peaceful, better for everyone, but I fear that the likely present has enough unsolved problems to portend a bumpy near future.
When I try to project a longer time period, the time blurs as do all distances, but as the old systems are outdated because they no longer work and new attempts bring either improvement or are destroyed by avarice, the future is still not copasetic. Hopefully, those who never had to huddle under desks during schooltime because a nuclear bomb might go off, never were reared to see America fight a series of disastrous, expensive and useless wars, and never knew that life could be more fulfilling with peace everywhere, will know that a lack of fear brings a better life for everyone
How I wish major positive changes were on the horizon, but I doubt that. Meanwhile I’ll enjoy the firefly dancing outside the window or the butterfly that pauses on my hand before flying off.
Give me more time to enjoy, to resolve, to grow, to produce something of use or beauty, something to help others appreciate life since this life is all we have, certainly all I have.