The contrasts that exist between light and dark, sky and earth, old and young, are part of the conditions that allow a balance between the systems of life. We exist in a symbiotic universe in which things at this moment have illuminated a consciousness in our state of awareness that sees what only exists in the fractions of reality where observations take place at random intervals. You will never see what I witnessed here. It is exclusively mine and maybe the rarest of images ever seen here, though I cannot know that for certain as I’ve not been able to peer upon any of the other trillions of moments that have already passed. Over the course of the next trillion seconds or 31,710 years, the landscape and sky that have painted this scene will have changed countless times but never will my view ever be duplicated.
Your lifetime is about 2,500,000,000 seconds long. Think about this: 2.5 billion seconds. 2.5 billion grains of sand (about 78 gallons worth) would fit in a box only about 2′ x 2′ x 2′ in size. Go to your grocery store and look at 78 gallons of milk, or think about how many gallons of gasoline you use a month in your car, and you’ll see that 78 gallons aren’t all that much. The box your 78 gallons of sand would fit in goes up midway on your thigh; now, square that, and you’ll arrive at the volume of sand grains that represent the seconds you might live. Now let’s make this worse: as measured in minutes, you have less than a gallon and a half of sand grains if each grain were to represent one minute. Measure your time in sand grains per day, and you have less than a teaspoon of time to work with. Do you dare waste even a fraction of that?
Everything we do and everything we see should have value. We have the option of giving meaning to our experiences, or we can accept what comes at us mindlessly without analysis, context, or desire. My experience suggests that far too many people simply are busy hoping to escape introspection, critical thinking demands that tax their minds, and the discomfort that comes with being exposed to those things that might budge them out of a stupor. How, without the embrace of the precious nature of life and our limited opportunity to comprehend even a snowflake’s worth of meaning, can we call ourselves human? Well, I’m arrogant enough to claim that many who would like to assume they are a valid representation of humankind are really not all that much different from a shingle of old wood rotting as the elements wear it down and accumulate snow and dust with the passage of time.
These are the faces of people becoming rich by giving their time and money to finding the little treasures found along the road of life.
The foul weather came and went. Life will come and go just as the mountains will be blown to sand, and clouds will form and evaporate. You have choices in life of what to do regardless of your financial situation because real wealth is measured in how you use your treasure of time. Each grain of sand you have been allocated is the true intrinsic wealth that can be used for yourself, or you can throw it all away so I might have more to admire while I’m out wandering the dusty trails where so much sand is simply driven over without a thought of what sacrifices were made for it to be here for my convenience.
It takes practice to find the wisdom of knowing what to cherish, but it will never be found if one doesn’t venture out in whatever capacity one is able to. The road to amazement doesn’t require us to drive a thousand miles across a continent, but it does require us to open our eyes to the responsibility of exploring our minds and sharing with others the profundity that new experiences are able to bring us.