Born at the Right Time

I think for a moment that I was born just at the right time-one foot in the present and one foot in the past. Enough invention to keep me fascinated and enough nostalgia to keep me grounded. Part of life with manual typewriters and erasable bond paper and the other in computers and word processing-one foot in 35 mm cameras and dark rooms and the other in digital photography. One foot in the back of a pick-up truck untethered and the other with seatbelts and a medley of airbags surrounding me.

As a kid I used to I wish I was born at a time when we rode horses to school and galloped home for lunch and then again after school. With hitching posts in the schoolyard and an occasional visit with carrot in hand during recess. A time when streets weren’t paved and there were new words to coin, lands to explore, and inventions to create- a time when the world still felt new and fresh and filled with possibilities.

I used to dream of watching the ‘Jetsons’ on a wrist watch- placing a call to Canada without a mayonnaise jar of change for the payphone to swallow - taking thousands of photos without sending them off to Mystic Color Labs and waiting for two weeks for them to be developed and returned. A phone now in my back pocket that can talk, listen, answer questions, write lists, take voice memos, play music, shoot photos, set alarms, and even help tune my guitar.

Never did I ever imagine some of these inventions coming to light in my time on earth. I wonder how my very own grandfather felt with the inventions of his time- born in 1884 he lived through the invention of automobiles, airplanes, radio, motion pictures, television, aspirin, Penicillin, X-rays, and a world that was changing at lightning speed. From horse and buggy and trips on steamship across the ocean-to a time when I think he may have been able to witness the first steps of astronauts on the moon.

I’ve wondered for a time if each generation experiences a similar amount of change in their lifetimes-and if that change can be felt in the push and pull of their lives on earth-and in the marrow of their bones. Do we all live with one foot in the past and one foot-perhaps begrudgingly or anticipatorily in the future. And do we spend some time wondering what will come next-flying cars, chips in our brains to hold onto fleeting memories, genetic engineering and perhaps irradiation of disease. And doesn’t it make you wonder just where we’re headed?

Maybe none of us gets to choose the time into which we're born. But each of us gets a chance to discover what it means to live in that time, to learn from what came before, and to leave something of ourselves for those who follow. We have been given this particular stretch of history to call our own. To witness it, wonder at it, learn from it, and pass along what we can.

We are the carriers of memories of the past-and the torch bearers of those memories into the future. We are here now with a purpose to create a bridge for future generations to travel. Not just names on gravestones-but path clearers, creators, imaginers, authors, artists, songwriters, dancers, cooks, athletes, record breakers, sailors, teachers, explorers, and perhaps most importantly-story tellers.

And as your fingertips drift over the Braille of fading photographs, and stories are recalled, remember to tell those stories to the kids and grandkids, neighbors and friends. Let them experience a bit of the past on their walk toward the future. Those memories become the proof and footprints of our having visited the earth. Each story a rung on this ladder of time.