NPR - Life goes on

Wednesdays are usually a free day for me now, in retirement and working on a new career. I usually schedule stuff earlier and later in the week so I can have Wednesday to do whatever happens or strikes the synapse to do. And of course, the weather. Even living in paradise, we have fall and winter weather, which arrived last week and is settling in with great comfort, including a good early windstorm recently which sent trees a swaying and limbs a flying. Great stuff to watch.

And so today I had to renew my prescriptions and do some small errands about town. It's a nice 9 mile walk, which I wrote about recently. I started about 8:00 am and arrived back home about noon, in time for lunch, reading the newspapers I picked up along the way and taking a nap which is one of the joys of retirement, err, being the CEO of your own personal business.

Well, today was five stops in those 9 miles, and just enough, with the rain jacket, to fit into my really old Hine Snowbridge backpack, which is really more of a large top-loading day pack which carries about a grocery bag of stuff in it. That's about the amount I can carry 6-9 miles these days. Anyway, while walking the last 2 miles home over the only route there is, a rural road, I got to listening, watching and thinking.

And if you haven't guessed, that's dangerous for me, because besides not paying attention, I wander in the universe of mental thought were space is just that, the size of the universe, as far as I can think and mentally wander. And what, prey tell did I have a revelation that isn't new except to me at that moment? Remember, I'm a Taoist.

Ok, with all the people going around in the cars, all sorts of commercial trucks and vans going by about their work, people living in their homes along the walk and all the people working in shops, stores and restaurants and cafes, it doesn't really matter about my existence at that moment. I'm just the guy walking alongside the road on his way home. And the world goes on. And the only difference is that I'm there then being aware of a small corner of the world with a small selection of people.

And wondering about that moment around the whole world. All 6-plus billion people living and doing in their small world. And everyone else obilvious to everyone else except the people in their immediate thought and interest. I wondered how many people really think about that, the whole time and place of the moment. Everything happening at once in a moment, and then a new moment. And again and again, onward with each step and each moment.

It amazed me that everything just happens and life and the world goes on. This isn't new or really enlightening, just curious on a walk home one cold fall day.