Today, a news story came through that a young human couple, missing since World War Two was discovered in a glacier. My wife says that I can't say it was belched out, but that is the term that first came to mind. Even spewn from didn't meet Nancy's exacting standards. Immediately I thought of a sequel to Sound of Music complete with a score and sets to match the hostile and foreboding summits the young couple needed to traverse to neutral ground. Their inexorable last hours, deprived of food and shelter; becoming weak. Their eventual slowing to a stop, huddling together through hypothermia and ultimately freezing, solid, under layer after layer of snow. You know, now, you can make Broadway shows out of anything.
Seventy-five years is part of our collective consciousness, a lifetime as it were. For these two rare souls, their death, or at least our proof of it traveled through time, almost exactly a lifetime and today there are people studying them in a form of modern archaeology. What messages would be carried into the future if you were to enter a similar time capsule? What stories would be borne in your gullet or tissues? What of the bits and bobs in your pockets? I am completely empathetic to the two souls who chose to die together enfolded in loving arms rather than separate and face the same fate alone.
This message coming to me from across the pond had power over my imagination like few news reports do. Although I have seen people pretty much wait around for a lifetime to die, some perhaps dying a little bit each day, there is no story of slow grieving of a life that can compare to these young lovers. Their families worried and struck with the sense of their loss forever. Perhaps they were not on the run across the Alps to escape Hitler, maybe they were just out to summit a glacier, I have not heard more about the story since that first flush of information. Which helps fuel the fires of my imagination even more!
I have also tried a mental experiment, skewing the time-signature of life around. The sorts of time scales that these poor folks come to call up. What can be a lifetime, but a collection of moments? What if a generation had to pass before any of our stories could be told? Each moment is important, this the corpses prove by their embrace. If you had but one moment left to share, would it be one you are proud to speak to the world of after a lifetime had passed? The message of love and holding one another affectionately has no equal amongst the human race. Just because their bodies had frozen and life had left them long ago, their personages remained in, perhaps, one of the longest hugs on human record. Imagine a sustain pedal for each of us on our deathbed, freezing that moment in time for a generation. What will the next generation think of our choices in our collective dying.
Essentially, I'm in awe of these young lovers and their death. They were doing the thing they wanted most to do, together, each with the person they most wanted to spend their lives with and for that they will always be remembered. I want to have a similar ability to speak to future generations and tell them to love one another, it is the only thing that counts. I'm not particularly interested in sharing the route of getting the ear of the next generation, but I do hope to repeat many of their messages. My moments spent with loved ones is truly priceless. Having feelings of love toward everyone is also priceless. Honoring that each one of us are incarnations of the godhead takes the burden of judging others off the table. We are, together, or we are nothing. Hopefully it won't take another lifetime for humanity to learn this important fact.
Seventy-five years is part of our collective consciousness, a lifetime as it were. For these two rare souls, their death, or at least our proof of it traveled through time, almost exactly a lifetime and today there are people studying them in a form of modern archaeology. What messages would be carried into the future if you were to enter a similar time capsule? What stories would be borne in your gullet or tissues? What of the bits and bobs in your pockets? I am completely empathetic to the two souls who chose to die together enfolded in loving arms rather than separate and face the same fate alone.
This message coming to me from across the pond had power over my imagination like few news reports do. Although I have seen people pretty much wait around for a lifetime to die, some perhaps dying a little bit each day, there is no story of slow grieving of a life that can compare to these young lovers. Their families worried and struck with the sense of their loss forever. Perhaps they were not on the run across the Alps to escape Hitler, maybe they were just out to summit a glacier, I have not heard more about the story since that first flush of information. Which helps fuel the fires of my imagination even more!
I have also tried a mental experiment, skewing the time-signature of life around. The sorts of time scales that these poor folks come to call up. What can be a lifetime, but a collection of moments? What if a generation had to pass before any of our stories could be told? Each moment is important, this the corpses prove by their embrace. If you had but one moment left to share, would it be one you are proud to speak to the world of after a lifetime had passed? The message of love and holding one another affectionately has no equal amongst the human race. Just because their bodies had frozen and life had left them long ago, their personages remained in, perhaps, one of the longest hugs on human record. Imagine a sustain pedal for each of us on our deathbed, freezing that moment in time for a generation. What will the next generation think of our choices in our collective dying.
Essentially, I'm in awe of these young lovers and their death. They were doing the thing they wanted most to do, together, each with the person they most wanted to spend their lives with and for that they will always be remembered. I want to have a similar ability to speak to future generations and tell them to love one another, it is the only thing that counts. I'm not particularly interested in sharing the route of getting the ear of the next generation, but I do hope to repeat many of their messages. My moments spent with loved ones is truly priceless. Having feelings of love toward everyone is also priceless. Honoring that each one of us are incarnations of the godhead takes the burden of judging others off the table. We are, together, or we are nothing. Hopefully it won't take another lifetime for humanity to learn this important fact.
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