Terminal Understanding

There is an odd tenderness that comes with aging. Perhaps it is that we understand our own fragility or that we can see the end of time from here and wish to be gentle as we move our gaze forward. I’m not sure. Like everything else now I no longer make assumptions about anything.

Our universe, the known knowledge has become so overwhelmingly large. My understanding of facts presented shift like loose marbles under my feet. “I’m not sure what to believe,” mutters one acquaintance, as he shakes his head, bombarded by new information masked in a chaotic jumble of electrons.

The air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the oceans we swim no longer portend certainty. I let the water trickle though my fingers and my understanding of its construct, its future and my relationship to it no longer in my grasp. I simply do not know anything for certain. Except that. I am uncertain.

My inner life has become clearer. My emotions more sorted out. My sense of peace intact. My dear body reflects its past and remarkably holds fast. It is just my understanding that has shifted. My sense of time and space and our place here on the delicate blue marble is what has wobbled.

I reach, like ET with his finger, trying to phone home. Trying to lock in my understanding of my home in the cosmic sense and whirling by the understanding the minute I think it is within reach.

I simply do not know what to believe. And every time I think I do, we have more knowledge heaped on the pile and my understanding shifts. Again. And so I become tentative in my pronouncements. Uneasy in my certainties. Kind in my judgements of others.

We are just really beginning to understand gravity for god’s sake. The very thing holding our feet to the floor. The water trickles through my hand. I watch the light dance as it sprinkles the surface of my Catfish Creek. Be gentle in your journey. We are no longer in an instant. The universe unfolds before us, moving through us as we merge.

By Margaret Kruger

Copyright February 2021

All Rights Reserved

Sarasota FL 34238