Just Passing Through
To be clear, I never got my kicks on Route 66, or balled this Jack with Kerouac.
My two-lane road trip adventures have been quiet affairs, typically involving small town diners. You've been there, too--counters, booths, coffee by Bunn, pies in a glass-enclosed carousel on the counter. A waitress of indeterminate age who will finish her shift, go home, start dinner and wait for the kids to return from school. One with whom you will engage in the classic call and response:
"You from around here?"
"No, just passing through."
I'm sure in my youth, still convinced that life would be an exotic power walk through the universe, my real answer would have been more like, "Me, Live here!? You just be joking!" I saw only a dot on a map and missed the rich matrix of community where people went to school, got married, raised kids, stopped to admire sunsets, died and were buried. I didn't get that my appearance was an irrelevant detail in a single day, that I didn't mater, that I was just passing through.
I live in a wonderful place with trees and fields and a stream and herds of critters that scoff at fences. I’ve been there long enough to see the creeping invasion of woods into fields, vines tugging on fences, outbuildings leaning. Entropy writ large. At some point, I will move to a place with fewer stairs and no barns. Yet, I picture returning to proudly proclaim, "see those trees? I planted those." It could just as well be, "where are my trees!?," the latest owner having made other decisions. All my labor, joy, pride--no longer relevant. As if that tree line had never happened. Like I had never happened. It wasn't my land, I just used it for a while.
I just passed through.
We live on a planet aged in the billions of years. There have been approximately 12,000 generations of our species. Of these, I know of a couple that preceded me and will be known by a couple that follow. I can stand at the graves of my great-grandparents aware that I never knew them or much about them, the depth of their lives or how they served the community. Like many nearby, the stones that bear their names will someday be worn smooth. Even in death, we just pass through.
Despite the inescapability of our impermanence, we continue to live as though the now matters more than what has been, or what will be. Having become wealthy through our own industry, we feel free to say It's MY land, and if I want a huge yard, I don't care about chemicals and lawnmowers. It's MY 4000 square foot house, and I can afford to heat and cool it. MY truck that gets 13 miles to the gallon. My health, MY rights, MY family, MY time on the planet. We look through the lens of self, narrowly, and ignore the context. We don't get that we are just passing through, that there are generations yet to come.
As a nation, we are not only refusing to see the transience of the present moment, the present decade, generation, presidential administration--we are doubling down on our "now" focus.
If someone, anyone, can be enriched--we don't care about consequences. We are suppressing renewable energy sources so we can make a few more bucks using up the rest of the coal, oil and gas. This despite the fact that rising temperatures and numbers of AI processing centers will push power demands into the red. We are allowing mining on public lands while suspending environmental impact studies, not caring what the nation might need in the future or who will clean up the mess. We make a big deal of saving a few billions by cutting education, food and library supports, ignoring the fact that these are exactly the resources people need to get out of poverty and start paying taxes. We continue to fool ourselves that by not taxing corporations, we create jobs, unaware that automation and artificial intelligence are replacing workers at increasing rates. Jobaggedon is upon us.
And climate change, perhaps the grandest "screw you" in the history of the planet? Didn't cause it, can't cure it. It's just fallacy created by tree huggers and social justice warriors. (And even if it happens I've already bought my land in Canada, so I'm safe.)
What is it about us that leads us to believe that we can do/build/buy/destroy/consume whatever we want, whatever we can afford, without considering what is yet to come, those who are yet to be? That fools us into thinking that we matter outside of a small circle of family and friends?
Where is the concern that we don't want to mess it up for the next owners?
Where the humility of, "what if we're wrong?"
Where the realization that our time in town is only enough for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.
Where is the voice that realizes,
we are just passing through?