There are things that go right by. We don’t record them if we see them, which we most often do not.. But in too many instances the things that go right by are close to what I am. to what we are, to what you are. Does that mean we’re leaving parts of us behind all the time? Well yes, everybody is.

What do I do about them now, the parts destined to be left behind? Some of them, a tiny number of them given the huge numbers of them, I collect them, small part of me that I hold onto, and I’ve always done that. These parts of me are of course my lived experiences. The major difference between now and earlier times in my life is that we have gone digital. That at once allows me to collect many more of the things that do go by, in my case ideas and images, articles and recordings, many more than I ever could in my hard copy life of long ago.

But of course I collect very few of those that are there, of the books published hardly any as evidenced by the few recently published books now on my shelves . If there were not so much happening all the time about us wouldn’t we constantly be trying to write our own histories of at least the wee little bit that we know best.

But for the most part we cannot do that. There is just too much happening, and the little we’re aware of ourselves is still too much. Yes, life is far too overwhelming. What do we do?

Some of us will readily abandon any attempt to make order of what amounts to chaos and simply drop out. Others, more courageous perhaps, will still try to stay on top of what is happening, knowing all the time that they can’t.

How about what’s happening just today? What if I were off the top of my head, to list just a first few of the things that are happening to us and about us?

* There are the tragic movements of peoples, some 70 million of those who have abandoned their own homes to go where, wherever there is a road or way, meaning where there is an opening for themselves. Of these there are fewer and fewer who succeed in reaching their destinations as we erect walls and other obstacles in their paths. We find them today in their millions in temporary/permanent refugee camps.


* There is the devastation of our planet earth, a devastation among other things amounting to extinctions of millions of plant and animal species, (why? well often to enable a relatively few of us, along with one president, to go on stuffing ourselves “à volonté” with burgers and cokes and our cars with gasoline).

* There are the schools that were meant to occupy the children while setting the parents free. But while setting the parents free the schools did little to free the children themselves to become what they were meant to be, such being the real end of all education. As if this could be accomplished over some 12 years of listening to a teacher in a classroom. Yes, the public schools while they did free the parents made it that the majority of the children, following their for the most part asted years in school, had to begin again, in most cases ironically having to go back to school in order this time around to learn something useful.

* Thee are the principal ways of amusing ourselves, our own bread and circuses, at best these being our school and professional athletic competitions, and perhaps at worst and much more prevalent, these being the sex and violence laden products of the film and television industries, really now the same thing.

* And today of course there is our little black death or Covid-19 pandemic that is currently dropping us, homo sapiens, much like we drop the musca domestica or fly, both without rhyme or reason.

And my list could go and on. And I haven’t even mentioned what would be for me the most important item on my list, the rise of authoritarian and fascistic movements throughout the nations of the world, that which is threatening to destroy, (yes, even in America if our president were to have his way) the West’s greatest achievement up until now, liberal democracy.