Seawater...

Throughout my life there have been troubling questions:  Why am I here?  What is the purpose of life?  How did all this begin?   Why would the new bridge only add two lanes?  These things trouble me.   All of us are on a journey that we began without input.  We got here before we could talk, or walk, or even feed ourselves.  How were we supposed to overlook these important issues and ask “Hey, who’s in charge here?  Where are we going?”  By the time I had become generally self-aware, I was pretty much sold on the program.  I was picking up words in English.  I was trying diligently to color INSIDE the lines.  I was even vaguely aware that the trees weren’t supposed to be red, but I liked red so I did it anyway.  I knew I was supposed to raise my hand, or at least announce to my mom that I was going to the bathroom.  My teachers seemed nice enough.  They kept me warm and fed me and didn’t let my big brother or the kid in the third row pound me senseless, but I did get a nasty “Indian burn” on my arm a time or two.  (How the Native Americans got blamed for that evil little invention I’ll never know.)  After a while I got so busy trying to do things “right”, or keep the lines straight, or win an extra recess, that I completely forgot to question the whole program.  Who was I going to ask, anyway?  Everyone around me was doing it.  They must have known.  I didn’t want to look stupid!  So I decided to just go for it.  I stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth while coloring, since everyone knows this is the secret of accuracy.  I practiced multiplication tables in my head while I pedaled my Sting-Ray home from school.  “7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42…”  I could count by 7’s faster than a computer!  Especially since there weren’t any computers yet, except maybe one I saw in the National Geographic that was as big as a room and could add, subtract, multiply, AND divide really fast.  I was successful!  I graduated with honors and went off to college where I did advanced studies in all the stuff my parents didn’t want me to know about.  I excelled in this area.  I excelled myself right out of college!  It was OK with me, because I had been doing prep work for fourteen years and I was tired of it.  I was ready to start living life.  Besides, there was this nagging question in the back of my head that would almost surface from time to time.  It felt really important, and now and then I would almost touch it, but then the alarm would go off, or my boss would want something done, or I had to get ready for a date.  This went on for more than a decade and then I was blessed with children.  They blessed me into another gear I didn’t even know I had.  Business was child’s play compared to raising kids.  Especially since we had six of ‘em.  Just keeping their soccer schedules straight was tougher than my real job.  But they raised other, more daunting issues.  At some point they wanted to drive my car!  Then they wanted their own car.  Before I knew what was happening, their rooms were clean and they didn’t ask me for help with their homework.  (After eighth grade I couldn’t help with their math anyway.)  Their clothes weren’t strewn about and their dishes weren’t on the coffee table because they were all gone.  So here I am, walking on the beach, feeling the breeze in what’s left of my hair.  Oh sure, I’m the first guy in the group who notices that it’s raining.  The dogs are criss-crossing in front and trying without trying to trip me, and Ro-Dog the cat is determined to pick up a starfish and bring it home.  Even with all these distractions, the questions I was unable to remember for all those years are back:  Why am I here?  What is the purpose of life?  How did all this begin?  I still don’t know.  I have watched my children being born.  I have mourned the death of friends and family.  For over fifty years I have participated in the ultimate reality show, and I still don’t know the object of the game.  My religious friends are sure they know, and I am happy for them, but their faith is not knowledge.  As wonderful as faith is, it is a comforting uncertainty. I don’t know if I’ll find the answer.  I don’t know that it matters.  I’ve heard all the truisims:  that success is not a destination, but a journey – that today is the first day of the rest of my life.  They go on and on.  I do know that NOT knowing hasn’t kept this journey from being rich and rewarding and painful and educational.  So maybe the answers aren’t even important.  I do know this:  I am SO glad to be here.  I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. back