Difficult to Imagine

The table topic question for today:

how

will our culture

change in the

next 100 years

Who decides where the stupid breaks are in these questions with no question marks, and how do they determine the way the words will line up?  I find that weird, and I don’t know why.  And that’s just some introductory blather to delay having to actually answer this question, because it’s a hard one.

All I can say for sure is that there will be a definite GLOBAL culture.  We’re getting more and more mixed up all the time. We move all over the place and we can travel anywhere in the world.   Traditions are not so ingrained because we allow ourselves to experience and adopt whatever we want from cultures that are different from our own.  And then we incorporate parts of those traditions into our own, with variations. We’re more willing to study and understand our human differences, and that will make us realize how much we are basically all the same.   I think people will be much more open to change, and willing to do new things.  Thinking will be on the lines of – okay, that worked then, but now perhaps this will work better – and we’ll be better able to anticipate the consequences of our actions and make informed decisions and agree for the benefit of the majority, and no one’s ultimate detriment.  We will all have access to unlimited knowledge.  There will be no reason and no excuse for ignorance.

Well, in a perfect world that would all be true.  Maybe our world won’t even be around in another 100 years.  We seem to be hell-bent on obliterating it completely.   If there are wars, I hope they’re virtual ones, fought on computer screens for points. I hope we don’t lose the ability to actually speak to each other, and that all this mad texting is just a phase.  I hope we learn tolerance and acceptance and how to love unconditionally,  and what we have to do to keep our world at peace.

And if we don’t get it right and the earth blows up, oh well.  Catch you later in another dimension.

Safe Vs. Sorry

If you’re expecting some kind of breath taking story involving a decision about skiing in an off-limits avalanche zone….sorry, this isn’t it.

Family ski trips for us were an awesome thing as long as nobody tried to kill themselves. I was all about traversing a hill, taking my time, enjoying the scenery, and getting back to the parking lot at the end of the day with no broken limbs. I don’t know what my kids did all day, once they got to the point where it was too embarrassing for them to be seen skiing with their parents. I suspect they checked out a lot of the black diamond runs, but also took an extraordinary number of hot chocolate breaks with their friends.

W. was a whole other story. He wanted to get his money’s worth I guess and to him that meant ripping down the hills and up the lifts at rocket speed over and over again from the minute the lifts opened up in the morning. If there’d been a contest to be the absolute last person off the hill, he’d have won it many times over. And that’s no doubt why he was a brilliant skier who could go anywhere always looking all skilled and fantastic. And that’s also why we rarely skied together, because I was so much less of a fanatic, and our ideas of “fun” were polar opposites in that sport.

We did try occasionally to do a run or two together. I remember in particular the day W. decided I needed to challenge myself beyond the ho-hum intermediate runs. I don’t know why he suddenly wanted to put my life in danger, or why I agreed to do it, but there we were at the top of a horrible mogul run. And there he went zipping down four or five turns before stopping to look back for me. I was still standing there contemplating the steepness of the incline, and looking for a route, thinking I might just side-slip the whole stupid hill. Safe and boring. It’s how I ski.

W. started to give me what I’m sure was probably excellent advice that I had no intention of listening to when one of his skis pointed east as the other began to head west. He flailed. For a few seconds he struggled. And then he did the most spectacular face plant I’ve ever seen.

So this is where the safe rather than sorry part comes in. In the time it took him to get himself straightened around and brushed off and finished with the expletives, I was able to compose myself and rearrange my features into an expression which I hoped looked sympathetic. No laughing going on here, not even a smirk. Just loving spousal concern for your safety, that’s all I’m feeling. Uh huh. I took the scowling glare like a pro. Because it was of course all my fault that he’d turned around to help me. Would NOT have happened otherwise. I assured him that yes, I’d be fine, he could go on ahead.

He turned around and took off down the rest of the moguls like he had something to prove to them. Only then was it safe to let myself laugh hysterically, which I did pretty much all the way to the bottom of the hill, stopping every so often to wipe the tears off my face. Some of those were no doubt for having forgotten my camera that day. No worries though, that image (how it looks when the mighty have fallen) is firmly planted in my brain forever.