I wrote this on May 4, 2016 while on a train north from Edinburgh to Inverness, pondering some of the history I had encountered as well as the vast open landscape passing by.

In looking at history these past few days, it reminds me how small I am in this grand timeline, and even smaller in the grand scheme of this universe. What am I in this “timeline”, why am I here? It cannot be just to live, reproduce and die? It makes you think differently of this human experience. Seeing the struggle, the war, how the hardness of the land shaped people. Yet the simplicity. If you could avoid the complexities that society puts upon itself, go for that simplicity, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Away from these electronics, back to the land. Back to human connection.
It never ceases to amaze me how we have been at war so much, with each other on this grand scale, personal scale, and inner scale. All for what? The quest should be for peace. If we had that, how could there be war? Why do we avoid that? What is so scary about peace? How would history have been changed? What would today look like? The carnage. The hate. People living, breathing, mothers, fathers, children, all the same when one thinks about it. Why not love? To gaze in another eyes, look at their soul and recognize the greatness, the same within, how could you harm that?
Learning to appreciate more where I am in this timeline, the ease of things. Telling Raffii that when two people married, they each brought a cup. When they had a child, they needed to make another. Appreciating each and everything, everyone, the work involved in the everyday, the relationships. Not like today, this instant gratification society, it doesn’t work, throw it away, give up, etc. How can that connection, that bond that is so intimate, so lasting happen today? That need for each other? Interdependence? Is there a way to get back to that simplicity and embrace the ease of the today? Am I “lucky”in the sense that I have had the experiences I have had to appreciate differently? To tolerate less bull shit? Am I really different than I was long ago? How is it that life clouds that so much? Will I just lose it again? I can’t imagine, the flashbacks will never stop, they will get less, and certainly are these past few days, but they are still there, and they jar me back to that appreciation of what I have, knowing at any moment, it can change.