Limelight

I suspect there are several times in one's youth that, with sufficient reflection and adequate memory, every one of us would recognize as pivotal in shaping who we became in adulthood. There must be times when our growing awareness of our world and our place in it connected in ways that would forever inform our beliefs, the way we make decisions, and how we feel about this life we live.

Those times visit me from time to time, but I've never been able to understand what they meant until tonight. Maybe I still don't understand. But tonight I was listening to the words of a photographer who, recorded for a television program, was able to articulate exactly what I've often felt must be just beneath the surface of my conscious memory. He explained that there was something in the way he learned about woodworking from his father that made him understand his deep connection with the land and the life the land supports, including trees. I cannot recreate the mood nor the setting that brought about this epiphany; I just know I was struck with a sense of understanding that was absent before.

When did it "click" with me that killing is wrong? How did that sense of morality get so thoroughly disconnected from religion, for me? How did I come to understand and believe that there is no god, but that many of the principles established by religions should, nonetheless, dictate the ways in which we interact with one another?

It would probably bring me to tears to understand those precise moments in my development that caused me to believe and to think and to become what I am. But, then, I'm easily moved to tears. Ultimately, though, what does it matter?

Such conflicted emotions. Is anything important? Only what's perceived as important for the moment. Everything else simply fills space...or waits for its time in the limelight.