What's Inside

What's Inside 

   There's been a bit of a lull in these posts since once again, I've been off traveling, this time off to join my brother in a visit to see my mother.  She's approaching 90 in a few months and as with so many of us, realizing that we are starting to see the end of that conveyor belt of life in the distance, something all of us knew was always there, but somehow felt that because we couldn't see its end, that perhaps it didn't exist after all.  But here we are, and lucky we are (to still be here).  The moments are precious.

   Part of the reason my brother and I arrived was to simply help a bit with chores, to try and tackle some of the bigger things that she can no longer do (make no mistake, my mother is still quite independent, having passed her written and physical driving and vision test --again-- just last year); but her once beautiful yard is now filled with weeds, lush and green while the rest of the lawn sits dry and almost barren.  She had had most of her surrounding area sprayed with a strong herbicide after her fertile soil became a haven for the weeds (I actually found them quite hardy but had to admit that, at over a foot in height, the dark green weeds did look more like a wild and untamed field, even with their yellow flowers and white puffs of seeds). 

   So here her surrounding yard sat, caked dry and a few weeds still strong enough to blast through after the weed killer was applied, which caused my mother to say that she was going to have another round of herbicide applied soon, this one even stronger (don't misunderstand, for both of my parents loved gardening and once grew just about everything they ate in this soil, from cantelopes and carrots to onions and ripe, luscious tomatoes; and the fact that the years had physically taken their toll on my mother, and that she could no longer grow such lovely fruits and vegetables and had to simply watch a cluster of weeds spread across her garden uncontrollably, well, this just crossed the line in her mind and had to be taken care of, even if it meant destroying the very soil that once gave and gave to her).  I told her that I would begin rototilling instead (now considered a controversial practice in modern farming), thus ridding her surrounding yard, even temporarily, of the weeds (but not adding another layer of poison to it).

   Nonetheless, here we all were together, three humans in all our varieties and viewpoints, working and sharing, eating and gabbing.  And my brother one again mentioned the movie, Interstellar (come to find out, it was quite monitored by consulting scientists for its accuracy regarding space travel).  My brother mentioned that his son enjoyed the film for displaying our human engineering and technological prowess and showing what we could achieve in the future.  But my brother countered with the other aspect, that the film showed what we humans would bring, which also meant all of faults along with that progress; once we had perhaps finished ruining our own planet, we would attempt to find another, perhaps searching with good intentions, but a search that would also result in bringing our greed and anger, our frustration and impatience along with us.  And we would likely feel it was our right to do so, as if this were our universe alone.

   There is the other side of course, that there is the good that resides in us, the compassion and love and empathy, the never knowing who will willingly give up life in order to save other life.  Unlike intelligence and knowledge, this is an unknown quality that remains hidden and limited, sometimes usable only once.  And ironically, few of us know whether we have it, or luckily even have the need to find out if we have it.  When put to a test, one that might end our life but might save another, most of us will make an immediate decision, to sacrifice or to flee or freeze. 

   This was exemplified in a story told to me by my seatmate on the flight up.  We began talking and she told of one of her daughter's school buses, one full of excited high school band members, fresh off winning a competition and now headed for another, this time for the state championship.  But as this particular bus motored along, escorted by other buses and a caravan of cars full of proud parents, the bus driver suffered a dibilitating blackout, collapsing over the steering wheel and causing the bus to veer slightly.  On the left of the bus was a wall of sharp lava rocks, and on the right, a sheer drop some 100 feet into a ravine.  One of the teachers three rows back saw what had happened, and almost instantaneously jumped up and swerved the bus so sharply that it spun sideways and began to flip, its side crashing onto the pavement so violently that most of its windows burst out as it skidded and scraped against the highway; several children were thrown from the vehicle (police later said that that was likely the only option she had to prevent the bus going over the rivine or crashing with deadly force into the sharp rocks).  All of the children survived...the only person to be killed was the one brave instructor who took over the wheel as best she could and made the decision to flip the bus.

   Life is like that, unexpected, often longer than we thought and sometimes shorter than we thought.  But it is also full of surprises about ourselves, for as mentioned earlier, along with the bad there is the good and likely we all hold a bit of each within us.  Perhaps it is our choice as to which one we'll choose at a crucial moment and how we'll react.  Our emotions, our pride, our ego, our generosity, all are at play.  But we always still have much to learn, not only within our own selves but maybe within our collective selves.  Had I been there with my brother and his son discussing that movie, I would have pointed out that scene from the movie Contact based on the book by Carl Sagan, the character being humbled and awed by the wormhole and the beings that she felt created it, a technology so far  beyond even the technology at the time that it seemed almost impossible to imagine.  "Oh no," the beings replied, "that was here long before us."

   The band members dedicated their show back home to their 31-year old instructor, one who gave her life so that the students might all go on to greater things (they won the state championship two days after the bus accident) .  And perhaps among the teary eyes in the stadium, and among the students themselves, there was a feeling of how great her giving and sacrifice and love were so carefully hidden, but perhaps the realization that those feelings were, not only in her but in all of
us "here, long before us."