Sometimes I forget peoples names. Okay, I regularly do this - I think I hide it well, though. But I'll always remember your story. Like how many kids you have, something you said 5 years ago, etc. It's like I have a special place in my brain for trivial, random and useless information. ...that just happens to crowd out more important things - like your name.Anyhow, my love of history definitely falls into the category of things I remember well. Well, I remember events - if not names {grin}. In the time I spent as a history major (and then anthropology, and then history/anthropology double major - only to settle, eventually, on English), I used to day dream about what it would be like to go back in time. LIke to literally wake up one morning in, say, the 18th Century.
I realized, pretty quickly in fact, that I would probably die. Aside from the obvious benefits of modern medicine... I realized that I lack the skill set necessary for survival then. I can't farm, I can't hunt - in fact, I like to pretend that when I eat meat (which I rarely do) that it never even belonged to an animal.... I can fish - but I don't like to catch anything. Yeah, I'd pretty much be a goner.
So then I got to thinking, and I realized that my single greatest commodity is time. Pure and simple. To know in your bones what your time is worth is a heady thing. Here's the real trip, though. How is it that the things on this earth that are most time consuming are often seen as having the least value? If we respect our own time, and others time, then we respect what ever it is we're doing with our time - whether raising a family, harvesting a crop, teaching a student, singing a song, etc. - and we are less wasteful with the product of our time, collectively and individually. But wait - it gets better! ...then we have less waste, and more harmony, and peace and love and unity. All from respect.
Maybe I should just say no to late night tea and coffee - or maybe I'm on to something... thoughts?
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3 comments:
i've gotten better at remembering names and who people are. i think when you're young, you just don't pay attention. and now i know it's true because the young ones don't remember my name!
I loved reading this. I often have dreams about being lost in time...I imagine that I am living in Paris during the French Revolution or living in South America during the gold rush when people were leaving by the boat loads in search for riches in the north. And, then I just imagine what it might have been like on the lower east side of Manhattan in the 1960s. Like anything, I suppose we would adapt to our environment...survival skills are within us even if we do not have to resort to them as often as our ancestors might have.
Amy: remember how Joey used to "use a word 3 times" and it was his? Maybe that's what I should do with names.... Ha!
Chessa: I think you may be on to something. Surely, as an intelligent woman, I could figure it out, as it were. Humans are, if anything, highly adaptable!
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