I am sick
and tired of the same old calendar year after year, even as it races by with
unconscionable speed. Why not, for some
relief, change the names of the days of the week or their order, and do the
same for the names of the months. It
would be easy enough, no more difficult than learning a foreign language. What would be really difficult and dangerous
would be to vary the number of days in a week or months in a year. Unless everyone agreed, those who tried it
would go mad.
Do birds in
our garden know they are birds? Do they
resent it that they have to build nests every year and scrounge for worms while
we live in the same comfortable house for years and always have food on the
table? Do they pity us because we cannot
fly? It is best to feed them white bread
to keep them happy and shoo the neighbor’s cats away.
Through the
microscope they are seen, these tiny creatures who are born and reproduce
within the twinkling of an eye.
Generations come into being and then are gone, then another and another
and so in an instant. Now my life, too,
has been diminished, reduced to a series of losses and departures. I hope no one is looking.
Great books of philosophy are now-a-days printed on long sheets of
flypaper and then allowed to dangle around the ceiling globes of enlightenment. Only those foolish enough to be caught in
their ideas have a glimpse of eternity.
Maybe I have finally achieved the status of
curmudgeon and thus unworthy of serious attention by anyone under the age of
sixty-five, and perhaps as a consequence I am able to communicate worth to others of
like persuasion and age. If you live
long enough, it was once said, you not only see everything and experience quite
a bit, but you are no longer fooled by fancy rhetoric, pretty pictures and
utopian dreams. Here then are some
observations and sayings about the world we live in:
<> When leading politicians and commentators
describe everything or at least compare everything to sporting matches, pop
concerts and Hollywood movies, something is definitely wrong.
<> The more I read about the past and sympathize
with their complaints about the breakdown of civilization and the arrogance of
youth, the less I understand the events around me.
<> Professional people perhaps brilliant in one
field should not claim expertise in other or all fields of human endeavor.
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