Best Of

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

— W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor

To me this begs the question, what is delight truly? I recall when I was a child I used to delight in toys — Lego, marbles, plastic pistols. Those feelings have become very much less over the years, and I now have difficulty recalling when I last felt delighted about something. The very activity of play seems to disappear.

Buddhist monks let go of all possessions, including toys. The whole idea of possessing things, of being given something for yourself, is consigned to the wastebin. Somehow, on some level, this concept entered me when I started looking at the Thai Forest Tradition, it was like some part of the inner me that believed in modesty and frugality agreed that this was ultimately where I was headed.

It’s rare that you see older people who still delight in something. I will be 53 later this year, and I feel this draining of the spirit creeping up on me, a kind of drawing down of the energies of youth. I’d like to be one of those older folk who still have a sense of lightness, kindness, fun.

I'm reminded ....

North American archaeology agree that the first humans came to the Western Hemisphere during the Wisconsonian glacial period. Much of what is now Alaska and Canada was covered is thick ice. Traveling over that bare ice would be impossible.

A midwestern Archaeologist I knew proposed that it wasn't bare ice, but that the surface was more like tundra. His reasoning was that the climate was dry and dusty because the glaciers were sucking up all the moisture. Made things really dusty, especially with silts at the bottom of what used to be lakes and ocean. This dust settled on the glacier, which built up for centuries, eventually forming a layer of fertile topsoil. Over time, plants, and then animals, populated the region.

This was the land that the first peoples followed into North America, and it likely took hundreds of years. The followed the food and water. That's what they were there for.

This idea was met with derision, but since has gained a steady following, even though one crucial thing is absent - proof. No one uses words such as "likely".