Through the Hour Glass

Then just as quickly, those moments of respite are gone, and we are faced once again with the dust heap. It lies in our garages, in our e-mail in-boxes, in our hall closets. Only while we looked away, it has grown greater, taller, wider. It is a veritable mountain of senseless minutiae. How did it get so big... so quickly?

One is left to ponder, not how we manage to cope with it, but why.

Is it any mystery that countless numbers of today's youths prefer to be jacked into mp3 players and video games? Why drug abuse is rampant in our society? They seek drama and excitement, anything to quicken them and allow them to ignore the triviality of the heap.

But I don't long for that sort of escape. Instead, I hear the voice of Thoreau, "Simplify, simplify, simplify," it says. The word sounds in the midst of the refuse like the sharp call of a bird whose shape I know, but name I've forgotten. Thoreau wrote, "Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

I am weary of being hindered. If only I had the courage to be elevated.