Another Key West morning. Warm and sultry. The world is beginning to wake up. The day gets started a little later here than at home. The roosters have been announcing its arrival for almost an hour.
I’ve just begun to hear the occasional voice from neighboring homes. I can hear the sound of an engine somewhere and smell the fumes from an idling car. Very intrusive – not the sounds but the smells, the fumes. Just one car and to think we have millions of them! An airplane is flying overhead. More noise, more exhaust. Is it any wonder that our planet is so stressed?
We insist on going places we would never reach if we weren't able to travel at speeds far beyond our natural capabilities. I am in Key West over a thousand miles from home. It took me only a matter of hours to get to an island already populated by many more people than it can sustain. Water has to be brought in from the mainland simply so that we can survive.
How fragile we are as a species and yet how insistent we are on trying to master everything - even speed and distance.
What is it in us that always makes us reach for more? For something different, bigger, faster, “better”? For something other than what we have?
Is this internal drive that causes us to cover our world with technology and even to begin to explore others our greatest gift? Our greatest weakness? Or is it just a distraction that keeps us from knowing our true selves?
Reflections on Life
