me 44 now

The wild, careering stagecoach known as Earth has stampeded madly around the sun one more time, and yours truly now finds himself 44 years old.

So I'm more than halfway done with my life. If you think about life from a God's-eye standpoint, it's really quite short, isn't it? Not a particularly novel or profound insight, I realize, but in turning 44, I already feel the weight of years upon me. Yes, how brief life is: if you were to stare downward at our solar system from a distance of a billion miles, and if you were to witness the progression of our planet around the sun as a time-lapse video, with one Earth orbit equaling a single second, then in less than eighty seconds, the life of this speck called Kevin would be seen to wink into existence, flourish a brief moment, then wink out.

And the world would simply whirl on.

If you know me well, though, you know that life's brevity doesn't depress me. The great, beautiful machine of the universe grinds ever forward, time and space intimately interwoven and moving together, gracefully unfurling to reveal an immense cosmic narrative, a vast story—everything in its place, every being with its role, every instant slipping away into the unalterable past, every possible future still hidden behind an existential veil, out of the reach of human knowledge and explorable only through theory and speculation. All there is, then—all we have—is the present moment, that infinitesimally thin slice of time, space, and experience. And that's enough. Life is brief, but life is also an infinity of present moments. In that thin slice of time and space, we make our choices, live our lives, and dream our dreams.

I'm 44 today. Just a couple dozen revolutions to go. What does the future hold?


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