Who Knew

These are the times when we humans are attempting to turn back the clock to correct history and make everyone and everything happy. We think. But do we know, time being what it is? Can we get the forests back the way they used to be? Can we let the native peoples of every land have back the land that they originally lived on? Can we eliminate the memories of the  bad folks who did what they thought was good but turned out to be bad, by pushing over statues or ripping down buildings or smashing memorials? Can we erase in currently revered books, words that were written before the era of political "correctness"came along? Can we say that what people did then, over what they do now, is not history and ought to be scrubbed out to what is considered "clean" history? Is that indeed, "history"?  And are "these times" so smart and wise that what we do now won't be considered in the far future, if we ever get there, acceptable? Will those then attempt to change "history" yet again?  To me, it's a dilemma remotely to be considered. Are those on this globe who thrive and lead and are very powerful, those who have what counts most on this planet, money, and have the power to push all others about in the directions they believe are "right", actually right? As someone who speaks from the human perspective of an elder who is getting close to a century of seeing and hearing and sometimes experiencing all this thinking, I, an oldster, think about these matters. At an age where you sense personally, that few humans actually realize how very little time they have to live their lives, how the vast majority of us will never be remembered for very long, I think a couple of generations before being completely forgotten, you begin to think like Peggy Lee sings "Is that all there is? or Frank Sinatra, not that anyone but those of my age, remember these names, sang, "It was a very good year" and then comfort us all with "I did it my way". The younger humans who don't and shouldn't look at their short decades lying ahead, and how very little all of their efforts to become famous or rich or meaningful in some way, are quite impossible to achieve, time being what it is but they keep on trying anyway, because that's what the human race does, and has done ever since the beginning of time and the first peoples on earth? We invented things such as  spiritual icons to make ourselves hopeful for and of our short futures. The ultimate triumph of humankind, however, is what we do for others. That's what keeps our world a place fit for human "consumption". And we are consumers certainly. We have reached just about the limit of consuming, thus the new movement to something called "minimalism". Perhaps unknowingly and secretly that movement is what we creatures crawling about on the surface of earth, tell ourselves, will be our last chance. There isn't anywhere else we can reasonably go but to another planet. Who knew?