Looking back; Looking forward.
60 years…
Yes, that’s a while. I can honestly say that along the way through those years that I have some great memories of wonderful times with fantastic people. Being honest, I can also admit to some times that plain sucked, along with some people who… well, they sucked too. As in sucked the fun out of the situation or just plain couldn’t enjoy the moment for what it was. Amusingly, those folks are some of the ones who I can look back and laugh the most about.
I don’t carry a load of self pity. Nor do I look on missed moments and lament the opportunities not taken. In all kinds of ways, I am who I am because of the choices I made and the directions that I went in. The places I have been and the experiences that I have had all came with their own prices. Paid in full, life lived as it was and is.
Being enamored of the multiverse as I am, I like to think that those planes of existence all carry me off on other adventures. Careers, families, places and people – each with that tangent that I considered once upon a time.
We all have a thing or two we wish we had done differently at some point in our lives. Looking back, we see those choices in a light colored by one thing or another. Nostalgia plays its part, but had we done those things, we wouldn’t be who we are now, in this moment. Again, had we turned left instead of right, what might that road not taken for us led to? Guess as we may, we will never really know.
The photo at the top of this little scribble is of a time and place I didn’t see but feel I know. Indeed a simpler life lurks there but at what cost could I reach it? Unless someone manages to tweak the space time continum, I doubt strongly that I will find out. Technologically, things may have seen simpler there and then. But it was advanced beyond what had been in place some 60 years before. In 1870, when Palisade, Nevada had just been a spot along the Humboldt River. A place that emigrants heading for California didn’t follow the river through it’s canyon; choosing an easier trail that took them up and over hills to the north. Even then, the technology brought by the coming of the Transcontinental Railroad was bringing change to the region as it brought people to it. Faster and more efficient communication; easier supply and commerce as the goods came and went, east and west, along the Central Pacific. With people in search of gold and silver, and new lives with the hope for better than the ones they left behind.
Yes, I get introspective now and then. A good thing for the folks like me who write on occasion. Giving us something to ponder, put characters on the page for you, our loyal readers.
Funny how it works out this way…