A Different Perspective: 1/17/2024

Just to make it clear, right from the start, I’m 78 years old, which is as good a reason as any for writing some thoughts down from this perspective. Perhaps others will find them interesting, maybe not, but I guess we’ll find out.

The theory of relativity, in its simplest form, says that things are different, depending on where they are and where they’re being observed from. In real life, it also depends on who is doing the looking. Throw in the added element of personality, and relativity becomes perspective, ranging from very shallow to very deep.

You see a bent-over old woman struggling her way slowly across a busy street, limping heavily on her cane, her head bent down, seeing little but the pavement ahead of her feet. What do you see, beyond the basic facts? If your mind is on something else, she is just an object in your field of view. In a hurry and stressed? A potential hindrance.

Young people, for the most part, see her as ancient, with no thought whatsoever they are watching what they will become. Being agile and bulletproof will always be their life.

Middle-aged folk are starting to feel that might not be true, a few aches and pains tell them there are possibly chinks in that armor, so they have a degree of sympathy, and yet don’t see themselves in those shoes.

Older people are more sympathetic to her struggle, yet scared to be her, or in denial that they ever will be.

There are very few who see her as a real person, a baby who changed her parent’s lives, the child who skipped everywhere, a teenager who fell in love, over and over, and the hopeful newcomer, starting her first job. Did she have a life-love and babes of her own? What joys and tragedies were woven into the cloth of her life? Is that cloth made into a warm blanket or a death shroud? Does she have people who care for her, or has her life narrowed down to a sole occupancy?

What about her and her feelings? Why is she out and about today? Is it a necessity or is she just out to prove she still can do it? Is she worried about being too slow or, worse, falling? Does she feel as old as she looks, or is there a 40-year-old woman trapped inside? If you could stop and visit with her for a while, which one would she allow you to get to know?

I’m like everyone else, what I see at any given time changes as fast as a six-months-old’s diapers, but I have moments like these, questions I’ll never know the answers to, and make no difference to my life.

But I’m a historian, love looking back into the past, the people and events that have put us where we are. Also being an engineer, I want to have definitive facts and answers, but that’s too often not history.

Mark Twain, or maybe Napoleon, supposedly said history is the collection of lies agreed upon by the victors.

Or the book writers.

I remember now! It was Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg email address!

So, I thought as long as the Ledger Editor is willing, and no one torches the paper because of them, I’d jot down some thoughts now and again. This brings us full circle back to the first paragraph. Let her know at whledger@gmail.com.