sonora2sonoma

Upon awakening these days, not counting first thing in the morning, I mostly don’t feel that much differently than I always have. That is, until I happen to spot myself in a mirror, which always occasions the need for adjustments to account for what an ancient looking thing I’ve become while my back was turned.  It’s funny—well, actually it isn’t funny at all—how age creeps up on us when we least expect it. I review photos I took 15 years ago, and it seems they were taken yesterday . . . until I remember that some of the people pictured in those photos long since went on to meet their makers. The same holds true for images I shot twice as far back! You’d think there would be some accommodations made for the extra 15 years but, no, it feels much the same. Time is the really ‘funny’ ingredient here that highlights these disparities while simultaneously making them seem so much less surprising than they actually are.

We humans are not predisposed to accommodate such change gracefully, most probably because these very changes, while providing opportunities to indulge in high-minded pontifications concerning the passage of time, also serve to remind us all too graphically of our ultimate mortality.

How different this all might be were we to not be troubled with such concerns! But then, we would doubtless be subjected to an entirely different set of problems, not the least of which would be the burden of immortality.

How would we provide for our children, were inheritance not a part of the picture? How would succeeding generations find their place in a world in which prior occupancy denied them the ability to do so? In a world without death, birth would be discouraged, perhaps even prohibited; it might in fact even become obsolete!  An oft-heard refrain would likely become: We’re sorry! We have no room for you! Everything’s already taken! We hope you understand!

While Republicans and other takers, such as those in thrall with the writings of Ayn Rand, might revel in such an arrangement, preoccupied as they seem with the acquisition of anything that isn’t tied down properly, those of us in possession of a sense of fairness, justice and equity would likely find such arrangements deeply troubling.

And then, there’s the question of just how many episodes of Downtown Abbey it is possible to watch? After a while, entertainments that sufficed for generations in a finite world would lose their meaning entirely. A new set of expectations would, of necessity, evolve, but, they too would, in the fullness of time, become blasé! The human propensity toward boredom would become much more of a force to be reckoned with, requiring incrementally bigger and better means of abatement.

At some point, perhaps in the distant future, our ability to keep ourselves entertained would lose its vigor and, when that came to pass, the entire enterprise would no longer be a blessing, instead becoming a burden and a curse.

Were we to somehow magically find ourselves at such a place in our present circumstances, a return to mortality would provide welcome liberation from the nausea-inducing daily downpour of the president’s piggish pratter, narcissistic natter, disgusting diatribes, bullying bloviations and Hitleresque harangues.

To borrow from Shakespeare, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

There are indeed!

Tim Konrad

2020.04.09