When you are done your early morning kitty chores and it is still two hours to sunrise, life gives you some options.
You can go back to bed for a snooze, start the work day a bit early and devote that time to the PC, or grab your coffee and head to the lake.
I checked the weather app because it was so dark I couldn’t tell what the skies were like and when it said “partly cloudy” I chose the third option and headed off to Lake Parker in expectation of something good.
It had rained unexpectedly last night and I thought that combined with a partly cloudy sky might give me a twilight to remember.
I was wrong. Well, actually the weather app was wrong. It forgot to mention low fog and a dominance of associated clouds.
So, when I got there and began to see what was happening on the far shore, it quickly became obvious that this was not going to be a photo shoot to remember.
At first I was a bit miffed but then I tried to get some shots anyway and have attached them at the end of the blog.
Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid but I hope you enjoy anyway.
By the time I got in my car and set off for home, I was over my annoyance and had accepted that sometimes we don’t get what we expect. The weather app isn’t always right and twilights aren’t always memorable.
And it made me think that the whole notion of “always” is something that we humans have created and is totally in conflict with reality.
“I will always love you.”
“I will always be there for you.”
“Always and forever.”
These are concepts that sound good but unfortunately that is the extent of it.
The person offered such promises has been groomed to expect them and anything less is often taken as a slight.
In the US alone, 50% of all marriages end in divorce or separation. So, half of those “I will always love you” promises are untrue.
100% of all parents and all friends and family die. So the “I will always be there for you” is unfortunately bullshit.
And as for the “always and forever” line, given that we are hell bent on destroying the one planet we live on and even if we don’t, it eventually falls into the sun, well I think it’s fair to say that might be a slight exaggeration.
So, why do we insist on saying such things and hearing such promises?
Words are merely expressions of an emotion that we are trying to convey and when it comes to love or care or commitment, we feel honor-bound to overstate our position.
So, in essence it is quite harmless.
However, the overall concept of always or forever is more misguided and dangerous and can lead to serious consequences for us and the world around us.
For example, look at the way expressions like the bible or the koran are adopted and enforced as if they were absolute instruments of how humans are supposed to coexist?
They were written in times far away from the world we live in yet extreme conservatives try to enforce each word within them as if an absolute and unquestionable truth.
But if you don’t really give a shit about those teachings, then consider something more recent.
Look at the american constitution and its subsequent amendments. Consider in particular, the second amendment which to its most ardent proponents reinforces our god-given right to weaponize ourselves.
Those who framed the constitution and this amendment did so at a time of muskets and swords and did so specifically in a world threatened by a foreign country. So their expression was that civilian militias were entitled to take up arms and defend their freedoms.
But now weapons far exceed what anyone then could have imagined and the country has a legitimate army and police force to protect it and us. So, it begs the question should such an expression last forever and always divine a civilian’s “right” to bear arms?
Personally I view anything other than a simple handgun as being the domain of our police and armed forces. But I am sure some of you think it is ok for us all to have assault rifles, machine guns, and anti-tank bazookas.
In my mind it is absurd yet the defense of such position heavily leans on a document that was written in 1787.
And therein lies my problem. Nothing that is written or said, is absolute. It is merely an expression of how people feel at a particular moment in time and not something that we have to hang our hat on for eternity.
Eternity is a misnomer in any event, so exclaiming a belief that lasts forever is flawed and ignores that everything in this world evolves.
As it should.
… just a thought.
