Life in 500 years: Will it be like now?

I often think about how life would be in 500 years. In a way I wish I had been born in 500 years. Who knows maybe I, or someone like me, will be around in 500 years. That is a long time. The progress we have achieved on earth has taken about 300 years. Because of the rapid pace of progress, life in 500 years will be so different that it’s hard to imagine.

I find it hard to imagine that in 500 years we still will travel in the same type of vehicles we now use. Or own the same kind of houses. What about the flat screen TVs of today? What will they look like? Will football be obsolete? Will cellphones be something that people alive in 500 years will laugh at. Will there still be wars? Hard to imagine that we’ll have something to fight about. But maybe not. Our population will be huge and our resources finite. Life could get much worse. Let’s hope not. We might have to travel to another planet and start over again. Is it how we get around in our universe?

CT Scan Day

Daybreak arrives before the rooster crows;

Coffee brews though he will not drink any this morning.

Today he will drive to hospital to get blood drawn,

Be CT scanned and wait for results in a doctor’s waiting room,

Daydreaming of a trip to the Italian coast.

She has never gone; he has not been in a while.

They plan to go when leaves turn red and orange

But before snow falls and covers roofs and trees.

They will go if the scan goes well.

He knows what is at stake: It will depend on the doctor’s words.

And so he prepares himself to hear the worst,

Though on this day the worst will mercifully come on another day.

 

© Lennard Pierson

 

Some Brothers Get All the Bad Breaks

My brother years ago had his left leg amputated after breaking it in a freak fall at the airport. He suffers from asthma and taking medications to keep him out of hospitals has been a lifelong cross to bear, and the medicines he needs to take have not done his brittle bones much good. Among his other ailments are high cholesterol and diabetes.

Losing a leg up to the knee has made it hard for him to move around. He uses a cane and a wheelchair. It doesn’t help that he carries a lot of weight. Nevertheless, he needs to work, so he does, which didn’t help his good leg. The knee of his good leg gave out last month, and he fell several times. And so he had to replace the knee, which caused him excruciating pain in the hours after the operation. The operation almost didn’t happen because the doctor found that part of his heart is damaged, but the clot they found was not bad enough to call off the knee replacement.

He had to return to the hospital today because his blood count was low, but not low enough to merit a blood transfusion. Tonight he’s back at the rehab place; he’ll be there for seven days, if he’s lucky. He could use a little luck, because he has not had much of that. He’s in a bad mood about his lousy luck, but he hasn’t given up on life yet.

Is Christmas Over Yet?

Christmas: It starts in November and lasts until December 25. All of these festivities are to celebrate the birth of Jesus—except that according to biblical scholars, Jesus wasn’t born in December. Some time in the spring was the most likely season in which Jesus was born. But due to a compromise between Church and pagans, December became the chosen month.

Could that be why I don’t find much to celebrate in December? First, it’s a cold and dark month; second, my childhood Christmases were unhappy ones. There was too much drink, too much loudness and too much violence. Like for many who endure this season, even Christmas music is sad to me. Nevertheless, endure I have and persist I must. Happy Holidays.

Community Meeting Questioning

Our Brain Must Speak

We hold back our tongues until our brain

Cannot hold its breath any longer.

It grows impatient, pulls on reins, until

It forces its master to let it speak freely,

Speak hard words it cannot take back,

That questions the presence of God

In the vastness of an expanding universe.

“Where is God?” it asks.

He’s everywhere, we say in unison,

And then we wonder how we know this.

Puzzled, we take our leave and put away

Questions like these for which there are no answers.

 

 

 

© Lennard Pierson

December 19, 2011

 

 

Lots of Room for Waiting at the Hospital

Jim is having a knee replaced on his good knee. The other leg was amputated at the knee years ago when he fell and broke his leg in half. A freak accident, it seemed. Jim has many health problem, including a longtime battle with asthma, which has landed him in the hospital many times. COPD is another health problem that dogs him. Add to that pre-diabetes, high cholesterol, and his heart has suffered some damage. He’s no stranger to the operating room. Even though his health has been a heavy cross to bear, he’s disabled and works without benefits, he has not given up on life, as tough as it has been for him. It is that way with us. Most of us fight the battle to survive though in the end we lose the battle and our lives. That’s our job and the meaning of our lives.

Research at the U

Today I went to the university, the one whose football coach nearly resigned, to do some research for the novel I’m writing. There were a lot of student at the U studying for finals next week. The semester is almost over for them except for all the coffee they will drink and the cramming that they will endure. Next week is also final exam week at the college where I teach writing. Going to the U was a break from grading research papers, which is a lost art with students these days. Comma usage seems to be a big problem for the students of today. At any rate, it was good to be at U browsing through the stacks. No googling for me. I also was impressed by the reference librarian and how helpful she was to this instructor. Soon this crop of students will leave campus and I can browse at the U all I want. It’s fun to still love learning no matter the age.

Saw Muppets movie today and saw the past

We went with both daughters and husbands plus a granddaughter to the movies tonight to see “The Muppets Show” movie. I had fun watching the movie, but at the same time I saw before my eyes the changing of the guard, so to speak. The generation who put their children, now grown and with children, in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street and the Muppets is feeling out of the loop of life. Our time, I think, is almost over. Our role has changed, and we are less free than when we were young. The spark that kept our generation in the race has begun to dim, and the energy that hoped to make dreams come true depletes by noon. Soon we must pass the baton because the race for us will be over. Time has come to stand on the sidelines and watch the racers pass up us by.

My Daughter is Pregnant but is Freedom Lost?

My daughter is pregnant, and it’s a surprise to all of us, including her. She’s 36 now and has two dogs and a great husband. They live in a new house of two floors in the west of Austin. Both she and her husband have good jobs and live well. Their two dogs, which live inside the house, keep them occupied, as the two dogs must be walked twice a day. And so I wonder, will they have time for the dogs with a new baby? She thinks she will, but she has no idea how much work it is to take care of a baby. Challenges, the word we use for problems, will snap at her and her dear husband like a hundred hungry crabs with huge claws. Life as they know it will change in more ways than they can know now. Two dogs, two cars, a house and a baby are heavy weights on the American Dream. The dream is fulfilled but at a heavy cost. Freedom is not part of the American Dream. You sacrifice some of it to do what all of us feel we must. Society requires new people to replace the ones that die off. It’s our tribe’s duty, so we must rejoice at the fixed choices we have.

Thanksgiving at Mom’s and the Uncertainty of Life

We were going to see Mom and sister Ana today to share a cherry pie Sharron made. But Jim bought a turkey yesterday for Mom to cook. Even though she’s almost 90 years old, her back hurts and she’s thinner than a rail, she stoked up sufficient energy to cook the turkey yesterday for Thanksgiving Day today. And so we brought the cherry pie with us and gave thanks for our blessings, as few as these are, without Mom at the table. Just as we arrived she got a horrible pain at the pit of her stomach and felt dizzy. She gets this way often, she says. When it happens, she has to lie down until the pain relents. We had finished our Thanksgiving dinner when she finally returned to the table and ate a little something. Not much of anything, actually. That’s the way it is with her these days. Anemia, the doctor’s say. But she stubbornly holds out against going through more testing. She doesn’t like tests, or doctors, for that matter. And so our Thanksgiving was an uneventful, but not really. Our eyes told a different story.