#544 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday December 30)
“History runs forward but is seen backward.”
--Soren Kierkegaard
Good morning,
This weekend, we begin a new year. There is nothing particularly significant about the advance of a year. It is an arbitrary moment in the Earth’s circumnavigation of its orbit around the sun. In that year, we have traveled 584 million miles together. A year of history has been written and another lies ahead.
I often think about how we look back on historic events and view everything that happened as inevitable. Wars, economic calamities, and other consequential historic events seem fated when seen from our vantage point. Even events in our personal lives often seem in retrospect “meant to happen.” Yet, we know that in our lives there were many small decisions—some guided by logic, some by hunch, some just serendipitous—that got us to where we are.
This is true with the events we are living through now. Nothing is inevitable—we are all actively engaged in this history. We can choose to cooperate with each other. We can choose to be kinder. We can choose to make tough decisions that might involve sacrifice. Nothing is fated. Kierkegaard’s words remind us that we are living in history. One day everything will be etched in stone. Today it isn’t.
As we contemplate a new year, let us hope that we, individually and collectively, live meaningful and productive lives that will be, in their own way, historic.
Have a wonderful new year’s weekend,
Glenn
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