Sunday, 26 May
 |
| Time Piece |
Good
Morning Justin…
A
car starting at point A moves 65 mph towards point B and a truck, starting at the same time, moves 55 mph
from point B towards point A. The
distance between points A and B is 125 miles.
How many miles does the car travel before passing the truck? I think the answer requires a bit of
calculating that I don’t feel is worth the effort to know.
I
think about the issue of immigration and I feel insecure about my job. I’m going to evaluate the various aspects of
a problem while having a possible financial stake in determining its
solution. I am emotionally invested in
its outcome. Were I the judge making the
decision here I should recluse myself because I have a finger on the scale of
justice. This is as it should be when
discovering what’s best in a court of law.
Politics, though, is not antiseptic when deciding the public’s
welfare. It vigorously shakes the beaker
that holds both rational thought and emotion-bound motive.
In this context a vote of up or down on a measure never decides the
debate in a democracy. For the loser
there are clear signs of villainy at work in the process. Money has been passed. A congressman’s career has been set among the
chips being gambled. Voices have filled
the airwaves with warnings and scurrilous charges. Mud is slung from all directions. Making law in a democracy requires a good
scrub down afterwards by all involved.
Where
are the men of marble now when we need them most? The fact is they never were. It’s impossible to function when carved of
pure gleaming stone. Our statues
commemorate what’s admirable about those that have made our history. Their human failings are among the discarded
chips of marble tossed on an ash heap, lost from sight. Our memory of past heroes has been carefully
selected for us. Our current view of
future heroes is not well choreographed.
Petty weeds distract us. We feel
the jostling elbows and choke on dry, kicked up dust. Shirts cling from effort, no longer
fresh. We’re penned in a corral. There is no dignity here.
What
a wondrous vista I see described before us.
A gentle breeze rustles the leaves of a distant tree lost in a sea of
grass. I hear the sparkle of a
stream. The air is honeysuckle. Bees mingle among the clover. This is our future as it can be, I am
told. If only the hearts filled with darkness
could see what we see, know what we know, and feel what it is we feel with all
the passion that comes with our love of truth and beauty.
Get
out your eraser. This too was never
true. Human progress requires nature be
put in its place. An inspiration derived
from the occasional brilliant mind must find its reality through endless
keyboard taps, staff meetings and battling memos swirling amidst a vast,
trudging bureaucracy. These are the
gears of our truly glorious civilization.
We are the new culmination in the long line of progressing vertebrates -
primates that ate from the Tree of Knowledge.
Forced from the Garden of Eden we killed animals for food and
clothes. We tamed the majestic horse for
our own purposes. We organized cows into
feedlots, turned black ooze into fire, contained it within metal and drove this
contraption about the landscape. We
devised a scheme to capture electrons, turning our life into a magic show of
light in the midst of night, pictures drawn from the air and machines to do
much of our thinking for us. We’ve gone
to the nearest planet and safely brought back some of its rocks even though it
doesn’t much matter. We’re smart. We’re stubborn. We find ourselves endlessly fascinating and
we might just punch you in the gut if you look at us cockeyed. We won’t be here forever. Maybe our epitaph could read, “On the whole it
was worth it.”
Love,
Dad
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