I flew back to Dallas today, leaving Tucson just before 10:00 am. As the very full aircraft was winging its way back home, I noticed the two people sitting in front of me (I was on the A-B side of an MD-80, in an aisle seat). What I noticed most about these two people so close to me was the fact that their heads were full of truly thick hair. Straight, dense, hair. Probably thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of strands of hair on their heads. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I began wondering how many strands of hair were on that plane.
My imagination turned to wonder. Wow, the number of strands of hair on that plane must be beyond my comprehension, truly outside my ability to understand. Then, when I started expanding the scope of my wonder beyond that tube of steel hurling through the air, I began to wonder how many strands of human hair there are in all the airplanes currently in the air...and from there, it just grew.
I've never had a particular attraction to numbers, but the scope of what I was imagining began to twist my brain into a tight spring, ready to explode with enormous power when whatever was restricting its ability to expand was released.
And then my fixation with the number of strands of human hair there must be on this earth dissolved into another number obsession: how many heartbeats will I have in my life? That curiosity made me keenly aware of the sound and feel of my heart pumping. And then, of course, my thoughts turned to my double bypass a couple of years ago. But that was brief. Back to the puzzle: how many heartbeats, not just in my life, but in all human lives, and not just those who are alive today, but all who have ever lived.
How many people, since people walked the planet, have experienced their last heartbeat? How many people have died, since humankind got its foothold on the planet?
The answers, if there are answers, tell one story more clearly than any other. Every one of us is insignificant. Not just insignificant, but astonishingly insignificant, so amazingly insignificant that any attempt we make to suggest otherwise is pure unadulterated hubris. The arrogance to think that any one of us has a truly meaningful impact on the universe is almost impossible for me to comprehend.
That's in the broad sense, of course. We're all significant to someone, sometime, for at least awhile. And, thanks to our collective arrogance and utter lack of compassion for other living things, we're having an impact on our planet from which the planet may never recover.
All that said, sometimes I'd like to know how many heartbeats I have left. If I knew, maybe I could force myself to slow the number I use every day. Maybe I could make myself take note that there's a limit to how much time I have left to enjoy the people I love and the places I go and the things I do.
We should look at our lives, what's remaining of them, in terms of the number of heartbeats we have left. My brain cannot wrap itself around millions or billions, so I will try to break it down into numbers that have more meaning to me. If I have 1000 hearbeats left, how many would I use spending time with my wife? How many would I use spending time with my siblings? How many would I use spending time at the office?
I need to call the office to let them know I won't be coming in so much anymore, unless that's the only place I can spend time with my wife.
1 comment:
I have three close female friends that I occasionally have lunch with. We all kept herds of goats for about 20 years. I'm the youngest by about 15 years. It's interesting to have friends who think very much like me, but who are older. There's a lot to be learned from them. All three seem to be using their time very well. I've heard each of them say that they don't have time left to waste, and that they just don't have the time to do everything they'd like to do anymore. All are choosing the things they want to do most. Seems like a wise and realistic way to live regardless of a person's age.
Post a Comment