PHILOSOPHY
This Shared Moment in Time
Our undying dance with time
I believe it was fifth grade the first time that a teacher told me “You’re the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be.” Even then, it was an interesting thought. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but the notion had never once occurred to me in my approximately 4,000 days on Earth.
As an adult, though, this fact has only grown to feel stranger and stranger. It’s an odd idea, but a beautiful type of odd. Whether in our best moments or our worst moments, there’s just no escaping the new ground we’re breaking.
And the fact doesn’t only remain true for us. In each new moment, the entire world around us is breaking new ground. The neighbor mowing his lawn — he’s the most experienced that he’s ever been in his entire life, but also precisely as inexperienced as he’ll ever be again. The teacher coralling her students into a line — she’s living the latest day that’s ever occurred in all of history, and she’ll do the same again tomorrow.
The same can be said of each pedestrian zig-zagging their way across each metropolis. Whether old or young, rich or poor, Chinese, German, Iranian, or American, it’s ground that we’re all breaking together. And on this ever-spinning planet, it’s ground that we never stop breaking. No matter how…
