Taking my place...

My photo today is of an object that once belonged to someone else. Someone who lived in Mexico. Someone who had a husband and two sons. Someone who's father was mayor of a town. Someone who never learned to drive. Someone who had diabetes. Someone named Luz Maria Milan Anguas.

The person I just described is my grandmother- my abuela, and the short paragraph above encompasses all that I know about her. She died when I was a baby, so I have no memory of her. This makes me sad. She only lived a short time ago, and already what's left of her here is limited to the memories of a handful of people. This scares me.

It's interesting to think about our individual selves as parts of the whole. I mean humans have been around for something like 200,000 years. When you look at the approximate 85 years a person lives next to that, it's nothing. We're here, we're gone, and the next generation moves on. It's frightening to think that all we work for here is gone in the blink of death. It's enough to make you question why we're here to begin with. But it's also kind of comforting to think about. I mean we spend so much time while we're here worrying about this and that. But, when you step back and look at 200,000 years, you realize it's not that important. And, you also realize that you, as an individual, are hugely important in the whole scheme of things.

Going back to my ride through Tomorrowland, when you look at the hunter/gatherers of the early days of man and then look at a cellphone that responds when you tell it to play Jack Johnson, it becomes entirely clear that you are a part of the progression. You didn't have to invent the phone or even own one. And, it actually has little to do with technological advancement. But each one of us is like a tiny grain of sand in a bucket. Together, we all add up to fill that bucket. Our individual stories no longer are what matters. Our united humanness is what tells the story.

I wish I could have known my abuela, and I wish I knew her story. But I know that somehow I carry her with me, just as I carry along the spirits of the earliest man. Sometimes, when the wind blows, I feel that they are speaking to me, guiding me in this life along my human path.



**This weekend I am traveling to the land of Chicago to once again experience the high that is the No Doubt concert. Therefore, I will be taking a 2 day hiatus from this blog. I will miss it, but I will return on Sunday evening for more blogful thoughting! Happy weekend everyone!