Things that Fly!

Between the lines

We all live lives of inconsequence. I mean that in the nicest way. If you have a hard time believing me visit http://nobelprize.org/index.html The Nobel Prize is an award of diploma (fancy document in what looks like latin), medal, and money (aprox. 1.4 million Canadian dollars). One prize has been awarded in each area since 1901.

Browse through the list of names in one of the 6 areas it is awarded in. You'll probably recognize 1 or 2 people of the hundreds you scan through. It's easy to pass through such lists without being moved because you don't know their stories. You don't know how they lived their lives, what their personalities were like, and how much passion each recipient had.

The people on those lists have changed the world with how they lived their lives, but we barely recognize them. Prize seems like sort of a misnomer, in that it is hard to believe that anyone of those list did what they did for the money. They did it because they we're in love with their work. But so few of us remember them or understand their impact on our lives. I'm getting carried away here, this post isn't about praising nobel prize winners.

What I'm trying to say is that even the most brilliant people in the world weren't that successful building an unforgetable empire. True they weren't really trying build an empire, but even those who were and are trying to build an empire will be forgotten. In a 1000 years the most such empire builders will be, is a footnote in a much larger catalog of human history. It's hard to deny this fact, yet despite this the majority of us engage in competative empire building.

When I think of the future, I think about how much fun there is left to have. I think about how, for me, living is about letting go. Realizing I will never be complete. That I don't want to be complete. There is so much to experience and so much love to taken in. Popular culture should focus more on developing passions than the collection of material things.

My random post of the month.

posted by Rob and Lauren @ 12:37 AM