As I sometimes do when I am once again home from a day of
work I settled down this evening to read a short piece from the New York Times. Often at the end of my labor I cannot face
the horrific headlines about beheadings in the name of God or of our need to
purge the slackers from the public dole.
Tonight then my ink on paper diversion was a tiny item on the front page
A tale of a building improvement caught my attention.
How this tale hit the front page I don’t know. Sometimes the Times surprises me with an odd
choice for the pricey front page real estate. This tale was about a man in Rome
who simply wanted to fix his toilet.
When he dispatched his handy person sons to set about the task tracing
the sewer blockage their labors led to the discovery of a roman granary and a
Franciscan chapel. The discoveries have yet to cease.
My eye was pulled to this tale because a couple of weeks ago
I had found myself listening to a tale on the CBC about trying to build a
subway stop in Rome. With each new
shovel of dirt some amazing archeological find presented itself until they just
gave up on building the stop. The author
of that story went further chasing deep into streets that lie beneath the city
that were laid out in the 3rd century. She visited ancient Roman
baths and various art works that are only seen by a very few.
So much of our lives are built unknowingly atop the
abandoned worlds of others. People who
lived and died with purpose are now totally gone from the memories of all the
living and their names are recorded in no books. By now their bodies are not dust, they are loam
or muck. The air they drew into their lungs those many years ago we now draw
into our lungs. Lives lived short or
long they are gone, gone and forgotten.
In a thousand years this orb may contain nothing that
resembles life. Or maybe a plague with
have winnowed humankind down to a manageable number where the threats of earth’s
other inhabitants will again be real to us.
Maybe some birds will come back and the polar bears will have ice to
frolic on. But in any case the words I write and the life I live will mean
nothing to whoever or whatever might remain.
I will be but a layer that will be built upon. I might be part of a raised bed of heirloom tomatoes.
Don’t take this as despair.
Take it instead as a call to make life better now. Give love to those around you. Offer forgiveness whenever it is
possible. Help. Act. Do the next right thing. We get so little time here on this orb and
either literally or figuratively what we do and who we are will be built upon
by others (I am hopeful that the planet will
have life for a long time). Knowing that we are staring communally into
a void act as if choices matter.
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