Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Time is Up.

An old friend sent me a column by Chris Hedges (1) with this note: “I thought of you when I read this this morning. Our old conversation in heartbreaking prose. Let’s find time again to spend a couple of hours together while we still have them.”
I read the column, published in the online journal “Truthdig”. And the essay, for it was really an essay, was absolutely heartbreaking. Not for the new ideas it presented, but in the cold and crisp way it summarized the state of the world. Hedges leaves no room for survival in his analysis, and I agree completely. As my dear friend said so eloquently “Our old conversation in heartbreaking prose.” Over the last 30 years, to friends, students and anyone else who would listen, I have presented each of the individual revelations that Hedges ticks off, with the predictions for the future that have now come to pass. And each time I was met by disbelief, or hope, or faith.
The future is upon us at last, and it is heartbreaking. So to my old friend I say “Yes, let’s find time to spend together before it is too late.” But in my heart I know it is already too late. Not to spend the time together, but to do anything but mourn. And it comes down to this oft repeated thought: drink the good wine, enjoy the good friends and savor what and while you can, for tomorrow you will surely die, and with you goes all of us, like dominos, inexorably to the end. Depressing? You bet. When there was still time to do something about it all, we did not. When there is no time to do anything, we still do not. We are presented with false choices, Mitt or Barack. No difference really. With one the slide is greased with money, with the other with hope. The end is the same.
Read the essay by Hedges and plan the rest of your life.
 
1. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_is_sacred_20120903/
Image: http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/AP120517117806-320.jpg

 

 

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