The Sun came out today. In some parts of the country, that's no big deal; expected, even. In southwest Michigan, it's something we haven't seen in a while.
Never mind our warm yellow star itself. After the dreary January we just had, I could go blind just staring at the snow in the bright light, as if it were a stranger. Always remarkable, it's like this every year, every winter.
For a lot of people, seeing the blue sky for the first time since the holidays is enough to warm the heart - for others, only the skin. Their insides never thaw.
It is February 1st. In some years, that's a day marked by tragedy, as in 2003, when the space shuttle Challenger burned up in the atmosphere. Or by events that would turn out to be massive in their eventual scale, like in 1865, when Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery.
In other years, history has recorded that, really, nothing happened on 2/1. In 1980, when I was 12 years old, the only thing that happened on this day was the debut of Blondie's "Call Me"... Which, in all fairness, would go on to become Billboard's Song of the Year.
Twelve is an awfully young age to have your existence stopped. To live on only in memories and images and documents. If this had been my last day at that age, Charlie's age when he died, I would have missed out on more things than I can list here. Mount St. Helens had not yet erupted. Jimmy Carter was president. The Pittsburgh Steelers had just won their fourth Super Bowl.
All of these things we dutifully record.
There will come a day, whenever and however it comes about, when our species no longer exists. This would become true for the dinosaurs who came before us. They could not have fathomed it at all. We humans barely can even with all our accumulated knowledge.
Just as mammals took over in prominence after the big lizards were gone, something else will follow us here. But we are unique in our words and our pictures and our stories and our rolls of plans. Squirrels, birds, fish, frogs, insects - they don't do those kinds of things. Not even primates, our closest cousins in the animal world, do.
It's not unfair to ask: If it ends up that nothing knows about us, are we even here at all? And if nobody is here to examine all of this, to sift through the data, to sort through the volumes, to learn about us whether they care or don't... Does it even exist?
In sheer quantum terms, the answer is, no. No, it doesn't. The trophies, the selfies, the videos, the blogs... The servers, the libraries, the archives, the museums... The names on the headstones in the cemeteries... None of it will matter any more than the crumbling concrete and rusting rebar will.
Then why do we try?
Because, at the end of each day, eventful or not, it's all about one thing: How do you feel about yourself? Although not tangible, such feelings are just as temporary (like a pen or a pencil), something none of us will have to worry about for too terribly long.
And the Sun will rise again, regardless of whether or not anyone is here to somehow capture the moment, whatever it may bring.
pH 2.o1.23
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