Why should I be the only one staring into the dark of night as I toss and turn, wondering just how I can fix, or contribute to the mending of this broken world of ours. Broken in so many ways, so deeply, grievously, that I wonder if there are enough dressings for these wounds. Worse, the question: what do we do if these wounds are mortal? Answers anyone? Thought so.
Add to that the puzzling words and sentences I find during the day when I read. Here's one for you. The Joker, the Riddler of great pride, tells us "riddle me not" so this one's for you. No, not a beer. Sorry. but you might need one after trying to figure out just where the next few sentences lead us.
"There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence." Meister Johannes Eckhart, circa 1300
Got that? Read it again, stretch the thought and its consequences. What that well known individual said, are we bright enough to argue and disprove? Think about it. If there is only a Now, then what do we do with the Past, or does it not exist in the sense that it means anything, and, in fact, counts for nothing, if at the end of the next thousand years we are at the same point, nothing new, nothing changed, only the always present Now. Dear Lord! Flickering memories of Philosophy 1, a course I most manifestly did not enjoy at the time.
Is there then no influence, no lessons from the past, no planning for the Future, a future which we hope will always be better than that Past and Present? Is there no use for planning, no room for progress, simply a waste of time? Do we live and agree with those who state, "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we might die"? What a depressing thought, enough to put one in a real funk if followed to its end thoughts and meanings.
If the Present immediately becomes the Past and the Future moment almost instantaneously becomes the Present and then the Past, before one can even do that proverbial wink of an eye, then of what use is anything? Why plan? Why hope? Just do what is comfortable for you- but will others allow that to be or will we degenerate into our basest thoughts and motives? I know where I stand on that question.
Think that is only a medieval thought, with no connection to the world of today? Think again.
"Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now." Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, 1999
Confused? Depressed? Hoping that your next class demands your presence? Publix? Whatever the excuse, it really does not work, for these words are not meant only to torture poor freshies. Nope, their content, their import is there for the adults of the world, if there are any left.
Think of the ads which bombard us 24/7/365. "Just do it!" says Nike. 'Live in the moment' blares another. We are dared each and every hour of the day to just go ahead and climb that mountain, dive deeply into the ocean, hop on top of the train rather than inside. Go for the adrenaline moment rather than plan for the Future. But there is no future we have been told. Evidently the ad people agree as do our politicians of the GOP - along with the idiots of the extreme left of Democratic Party. There is no realism in their behavior, certainly not of any consequence for a Future, which evidently will never come into existence. Head spinning yet?
Ready to push this aside, say life is not a philosophy course? But perhaps it is so in true existence. Where and how do we differ from a thousand years ago. We fight with more 'advanced' weaponry? But dead is dead. We care for the hungry, the needy any better than we did then? Not with what I see around. We plan any better for a constantly changing world? Or do we allow that very world to disintegrate beneath our feet, in our lungs?
Where, how and when have we improved the chances for mankind to survive, to progress, to indeed be able to refute those philosophers, show that there is indeed a pathway for us. There we could delineate the Past from the Present, from the Future, that which is to come. Can we ever draw a distinct line which distinguishes the Now from that which is the Past and that which will be the Future?
Certainly they think not. They are not alone. Perhaps we can explain this lack of progress as something caused by a lack, a deficiency within mankind. They pass on the chance to do, to act, to better mankind. And so we doom ourselves. Our own fault. Our own blindness. Willful? Cannot help ourselves? Shakespeare warned us about that five hundred years ago.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men / which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune. / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / is bound in shallows and in miseries." Julius Caesar
Dora asks, "Can we do it?" The Little Engine puffs away, "I think I can, I think I can." And we, the peoples of the world - what do we say, what do we think, what do we do? What do you or I do?
Philosophy class? Mere bull session material? I think not. We truly have not, as clearly as we should have, created the lines to which we can, with confidence. safely point to as that time which separates our existence into the Past, the Present - the Now - and the Future. We should have done better. Now go back to sleep or to mean thoughts, or to better thoughts, a determination to do better. One can always hope. Or can one?
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