Thoughts of today

Thanks to television, for the most part, we're introduced to characters backed by real actors whom we seem to develop symbiotic relationships with. We relate to them on some level for we seek to be like them and share information with others as if we know them intimately. We've become more entwined with actors' lives than we oftentimes are with those of our families, friends, and neighbors. Many of us today can't give you the name of the person residing next to us and yet we can quote a litany of information about someone we'll never opportune to meet. Why have we fallen victim to living passive lifestyles? What is so attractive about actors, sports and music celebrities that they've become the lead point of society? I'd think that it's what they represent...success, prestige, money, but our little ones, who know nothing of finances, become as wrapped up in these people as adults do. Is it because they're easily accessible, because they ease our boredom, because they offer an escape from more serious matters, because they represent attainable achievement, or because through them our dreams have wings? I watched the children's movie, Wall-E, recently and it now comes to mind due to the scenes of humans blinded by video screens and oblivious to their immediate environment much less the world at large. What would occur should every American decide to omit television from their lives for even one week?

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If starving and given the opportunity and one dollar, would you buy yourself a hotdog or a lottery ticket?

Unused moments

The drive to the airport drags even as it passes much too quickly. Thoughts which should be shared remain private, moods are subdued. The smiles of Friday gone on Sunday. Where did the time go, you wonder, just as you do at the end of each stolen weekend. It's never long enough. What would constitute long enough to satisfy you...a week, a month, forever? Sometimes it feels as if even forever would never be long enough.

But, you put those thoughts aside, encourage a smile that you in no way feel and brave your way through another goodbye, another parting, another tear shed when safe from view. Heaven forbid you allow true emotion to govern the moment and affect those certain to follow. Unknowns and uncertainties hold your voice in check, forever muting the entreaties, the desires, the promises that would bind. Human fears, human frailties stay your impulse. The moment, once again given opportunity, remains unused.

Boarding a plane yet again; bridging the two worlds you seem destined to occupy. There are times when you tire of the travel, the delays, the layovers, and other times when the excitement builds as if it's your first foray into flying all over again. It's been two years now this month since the first temptation, the first curiosity, was stirred by words; a breath of a promise offered by another. Words were all you had at the time but, in that time and unlike now, they were enough. Cautious curiosity gave way to acceptance, trust and understanding. Words were your battleground, your playground, your refuge. Before them and by them, you spent your days intertwining your lives. Like ivy, you emerged into the unknown expanse driven only by instinct. Your words, your sustenance encouraging tendrils securing you, supporting you, until filling the space where once there was nothing.

As the plane taxies across the tarmac, you think again of that wasted moment and all the promises that you two could guarantee compared to the lack of guarantees offered by life. Though inclined to ignore the thought that this plane might not get you from point A to B, the thought does come unbidden to remind you that that last unused moment could at any time be the last. Why do you insist on blind optimism that the moments are unending, uninterruptable, always at your command?