The Changing World

When I was a young man, maybe 13 years old, I visited my grandfather before he died. He was a salty old man, well he looked old. In truth I don’t think he was much older than 65.  Come to think of it that’s only 13 years older than I am now.  The thought makes looking in the mirror a whole new experience.  How could he have looked so old?  I think people of his generation just looked older.  Maybe they lived harder lives. Maybe it was the years of cigarettes or gallons of booze. Maybe it was being a Navy veteran in a war this world is starting to forget. Maybe he was just a sick man with paper thin skin wrapped like cray paper  over worn and fading tattoos.  A man dying of a disease that took him when war and motorcycles never could. 

Before he died, as a young boy, I sat beside him and he presented me with memories he thought I might appreciate. One was his Navy Blue Jacket Manual, a guide to being a seaman.  Another was a large certificate I barely understood. It looked important but not having seen it for years I can’t recall the details.  Suffice it to say there was probably an imposing Neptune clutching his trident and sea dragons curled around it's edges.  Later in life I came to learn it was an award of sorts. It was called a Shellback and given to seaman or pollywogs the first time they crossed the equator. Undoubtedly there was a large amount of hazing that accompanied it but those stories are lost to time. 

At this moment, I am flying on a jet from California bound for Bangkok, Thailand via Tokyo.  Truth be told I won’t be transiting the equator on this journey but I did accomplish it many times while living in South America.   Today it is easy as I am whisked around on jets challenging the heavens.  For my grandfather it was a different world.  The tropics likely meant sweltering heat when deck time was cherished and below deck meant sweat filled nights sandwiched between endless monotony. 

The Pacific he knew was so different than the one I know today. Wild jungles, grimy port cities and hostile submarines have been replaced by gleaming skyscrapers fantastically modern trains and cities with populations eclipsing the cities of his age.   The world has always changed but it seems like it is changing so much faster at the moment.  As human beings our ability to effect change has never been as great as it is today.  Seemingly innocuous actions we engage in on a daily basis threaten long term impact at a scale most can scarcely imagine.   Scientists warn us of global catastrophe.  Of land masses vanishing and one hundred year climactic events becoming almost common place.  Still we don’t see them as anything more than momentary.  Despite our advancements scientifically and intellectually most of the world gazes up at the heavens from the perspective of an ant moving along a seemingly endless line that will carry them from life to death.

The inability to see beyond oneself has always been a human detriment.  It can be a weakness in our personal lives and catastrophic in our global perspective.  For those of us who appreciate the consequences we stomach our displeasure often with our own actions and try to justify them out of necessity.  All the while we seek to mitigate them for the good of civilisation and the planet that gives us safe harbour in a universe of hostility.  

I cannot say that I possess the definitive morality to proclaim what is right and what is wrong.  I can say however that we all should try our best to minimise our impact environmentally and maximise our impact socially.  Perhaps said more simply, we should endeavour to use less and give more.  

The ocean below my aircraft is vast and I can’t help but admire the simplicity of the world my grandfather must have looked upon.  It was one of right and wrong.  Aside from winning the war little else like mattered.  I wonder if he could even imagine the virgin forested islands that he once looked out at from the shelter of his landing craft would not always be what he saw.  That the monkeys in the trees and the birds singing their songs would disappear.  That giant cities would rise from the ashes left by war, some more modern than anywhere else in the world.  

As modern as the world is becoming it is frighteningly indifferent to the seeds of our own destruction.  The world of the myopic ant simply cannot see the consequences of its actions as it scurries along feeding on the environment that gives it life.  I can only hope that its prodigy will evolve fast enough to look toward the world beyond its vision.  Now if the other ants will only accept the science of evolution we might all have a future.  I see this constantly in my associates.  Talk of a world changing for the worst seems distant and unreal.  Instead they chose to live in the present as if tomorrow will never come.  When it does, they will be a memory and those problems will be left to the future.  It is only among the youth that there is a realisation that the changes, however terrible, will begin and span their lifetimes.  

I suppose humans have always been this way.  We are terrible planners.  We move from one problem to the next but seldom think of the future that will not personally involve us.  There are many examples of creations that have stood the test of time yet they were largely created by people that wanted to outlive their own lives.  They were not created as gifts or solutions for the future, they just turned out that way.  

There are times when I wish I could live the life my grandfather did.   I might stare out a porthole at an undulating ocean.  I might appreciate the moments and simply hope I would be around another day to see them again.  That a submarine wouldn’t sink me and a bullet wouldn’t find me.  Unfortunately or more likely fortunately, this is not my path.  Mine is to stare out a window from above the clouds at a world rapidly changing.   To quietly pray that we as a world can somehow in mind and in actions, rise above ourselves for the generations that will proceed us.  To finish my journey across the Pacific in hours when it once took weeks. To comprehend what he never did and prevent the nightmares he never imagined.