Love Harder

“Time After Time” is a TV adaptation of the novel and movie of the same name.  The premise is that HG Wells has built a time machine.  The time machine is used by Jack the Ripper to escape a manhunt, and HG follows him hours later to the future in NYC.  There is a good plot line, which I won’t ruin, but I’ll key in on one point.  The story shows HG sobbing at the news shown on the TV.  The power that the human race hold to wage war and destruction is awe inspiring in the worst way, and all HG can do is cry at the lack of wisdom he had thought the human race would surely have found “in the future.”  He was hoping that the future would be closer to a utopia than his time of 1893 in London.

I have a lot on my mind and there are two distinct paths I can take this little flock of words.  One regards the ills of the world, but as seen in the clip I’m recalling, there is plenty on each day’s daily news to keep that rabbit hole open for, well for ever.

What crosses my mind right now, though, is that there are many advances since 1893 that are incomprehensible for someone from that time to grasp. Mechanized machinery of every kind, from cars as we know them to airplanes and rocket ships would astound, and really still should. More than that though look at science and all we as humans have learned.  On the positive side exploration of biology has led to miraculous advances in the medical field.

If born in 1893 I would be dead a minimum of 3 times over, and I suspect that’s probably one or even two orders of magnitude too low. I look at being given a blood transfusion at a couple weeks old, receiving a liver transplant, surviving emergency surgery and the removal of my colon and being here to talk about it.  That doesn’t even address the countless medications that alone or in combination with the surgeries and procedures worked to cure me of something or other.  Genetic therapies are being realized now and the techniques and abilities to repair the body are nothing short of remarkable.

Yet as I sit here comfortably on my couch there are those whose lives are ebbing despite all the advantages of modern medicine.  My cousin is among them.  I always expected to be the first of my generation in our family to go, but it doesn’t seem that fate has that in mind. I don’t know what to make of this fact.

Most of you know by now that this is the point in the story where I find the sliver of silver lining.  While there are some things I’ve witnessed and learned in the past few weeks that give every reason to smile, every reason to remark at the strength of wives and family caring for the dying, I sit here feeling a little lost.  Lost for words. Lost for meaning. It’s unclear if this melancholy is a result of contemplating the finite life we all have, or the imminent loss of my cousin, or the recent loss of a friend to COPD. Is it knowing there are families that need to regroup in the aftermath? Is it specifically the warmth my cousin and his family have graced me with even though we’ve spent precious little time together over the years? Honestly, it’s probably all of that and more that I have yet to understand or recognize.

The fact remains though, right now, this minute, I sit in a restlessness unquenched by news of the profane, inane or extraordinary.  I appreciated the solar eclipse today, but as friend put it, an orb of rock blocked the view of a ball of gas for a couple minutes.  Time didn't stop. Much of the daily grind feels as it’s described, just a monotonous grind. The real beauty of connection, of real discussion, conversation, friendship and love, the visible wonder of the world, the compassion that is shown by so many on a daily basis is but a fraction it seems of the day to day existence. Life is short.

Pray hard.

Play hard.

Love harder.