|
Custom Search
 Reference: "Brain Wave Diary" (05/06/01) Jetting along It is a fabulous day, bright blue sky and startlingly bright sunshine and a cool breeze to make things nice. What a present, investment zero, satisfaction - off the scale. Trees triumphant in their brand new spring jackets, birds singing with the promise of nesting and early posies with bursting buds, thrusting inquisitive opening blooms into the bright eye blinking day. Another perfect day to lint less navel gaze and WONDER at it all.
Up above I notice con trails from airliners, usually the flight path is East to West, my attention is drawn today by the West to East condensation trails... or else I would have thought about something else. I kicked back on my chair to look better, balancing on the back two legs. This is thrill seeking when there are too many fives in your age. As I contemplated the clean, long lines of white jet vapor scribed on the perfect sky, I wondered about the souls ensconced in the bright aluminum tube of their NOW. I wondered whether the food had been OK, and if the cart had made the party run yet and how perhaps little relationships had developed from the absolute improbability of streaking through the sky at thirty two thousand feet seated with a random assortment of travelers. Many other idle flight thoughts crossed my relaxed mind. I wondered if I had just watched first class, ostrich-like in their disdain for crass need to go, or lesser seat class representing AWE, fright, reunion and anticipation. I expect so! As I watched, I thought, what if I mark a place on the contrail behind the path of flight and then measure in time how far they advanced in their future... using my stop watch. Why, who knows? Probably my penchant for WONDERING. As I went about this task, I realized it was an impossibility. Selecting a point behind the craft was no problem, starting and stopping elapsed time on the watch was no problem. The problem was the distance traveled... since I stopped the watch. It could never be their NOW... so the statistic could only ever be historical. Their NOW was always a future point from where I stopped the watch. Anything measured behind the line of travel was historical and could never include NOW. For the passenger this meant everything that could be measured was long gone in significance. Irrelevant in the scheme of destiny. Left far behind in the dissolving condensation trail of travel. Time used... never to be returned or revisited and of no value at all to NOW. Knowing what it WAS, versus knowing what it IS, is a very different thing. "What a metaphor for life", I thought. Why bother with a measurement of life's history? Why dwell on something that was fleetingly NOW... then, a place and time never to be no more. Why not swing the beam of focus ahead and measure only that which is from NOW to a point ahead in the future? The measurement that MATTERS. Surely this is the only statistic that matters, is it not? Destination... well for the traveler that is locked and decided in the past at the ticket counter... for once airborne that is where the chances are... you will arrive. In life we do not even have to lock on to a certain destination we can wing it like a bird, going NOW to where it is favorable to be THEN. I expect if we remembered this, we could and would. Would we not? Your baggage? Oh I expect it goes someplace else... like it is won't too. Love Light Laughter and WONDER Doug
Originally published in Project X Newsletter #57
|
||
