It was the final day of the year and weather-wise a perfect day for a walk on the trail by Lake Hancock.
The sky above was clear-blue, and the temperature was somewhere around fifty and perfect for throwing on a jacket and taking a walk.
We got there just after eight and though there were a few people ahead of us, we didn’t care. Most of the time we were on our own, or at least, just us and some furry or feathered friends.
It was a bit too chilly for the alligators but everyone else was out and having fun. Even the moon hung around to see what was going on.
We saw most of the usual suspects plus a couple of playful raccoons, one of which walked right by us on the trail, perhaps only three feet from Inna.
The adventure finished with a distant capture of an elusive night heron, and another far-off shot of a woodpecker that was playing hide ‘n seek on one of the palm trees.
I have added a number of images as the end of the blog and I hope you enjoy.
It was later in the day as I sat down to see what I had managed to get, that the thought for the blog formed in my brain. It revolved around the notion that this was my last shoot of the year and I wondered what the new year would bring.
The more I thought about it, the more I ridiculed the notion of time. We humans invented it and beyond our mind it doesn’t really exist.
Yet we use it to measure and delineate almost everything about our lives.
It becomes the one metric by which almost everything is defined.
“How old is little Johnny now? What age was grandpa when he died? How long before we eat?”
We try to calibrate everything by it and somehow believe it to be a relevant yardstick. We have even created a word for it when something larger needs to be counted. “I will love you for all eternity. Who wants to live forever?”
Yet, unless I am sadly mistaken, most creatures in the world don’t use such a concept and they live (for however long they live) regardless of the passage of time.
For example, a Mayfly only lives 24 hours. Do we really think the passage of time is therefore a relevant metric for him? I say “him” because apparently the female Mayfly lives 5 days (she has more to get done, apparently.)
The Greenland Shark lives up to 500 years so do they puzzle about how short humans live and whether anything meaningful can be accomplished in that time?
We use time not just to define ourselves but also to define the world around us. We also use it to provide limits on each of the things we do or achieve. There is a statute of limitations on most crimes, which implies that the relevance of the crime is lost once that timeframe passes.
We even limit creativity and such with time, where patents and copyrights only last a certain number of years. (Hence Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Wilie became public domain this morning and open for us all to use as we wish.)
Time is a strange concept and one that should be taken with a grain of salt.
It’s passage is far less relevant than what we actually do with the time we are here. Forget about physical achievements or creative ownership as these will be lost over time.
All that really matters is how we use time to love and be loved, to care and be cared for.
Beyond this, we fool ourselves into believing our existence is even remotely relevant.
The most famous Mayfly ever is the one that (OK, then, go on. Finish that sentence for me.)
… just a thought.
