I think the changes mean something

I would say that I’m firmly in favor of incremental change. But the world in which we live is not like that.

My dad was born into a world in which shouting was long distance communication. A horse and buggy was fast. Now we’ve ripped through so many changes that it hardly pays to mention them. It’s enough to say that I can talk to an image of your face in an instant even though your body is half-way around the world. I could actually reach out and touch your warm cheek in less than a day, flying at 30,000 ft. All these changes in space and time mean something, I’m quite sure of that. But here I sit, the pace of my own life from birth to now proceeding just as evolution decreed, and I think that my own life is moving along too fast all by itself.

So all I can do is try to make some sense of it. And where I usually start is with what, in all of these changes, is the same. The rest I’ll have to sort out as best I can – a little bit at a time.

But let’s say that some of this stuff means something. Perhaps I could tell you a story.

That’s something people have been doing from the beginning. Computers, the movies, even books – all are ways that we tell others what we have to tell. There’s considerable flash in the way we tell stories today, but it’s still fundamentally the story we crave.

So…

I met a girl. This happened long enough ago that the details don’t much matter. Maybe she was six when my wife and I moved into our house on New Hampshire Street. This girl was one of the neighbor girls. I watched her play and grow up. I talked to and teased her now and then. She moved away.

But my wife and I kept in touch with her parents, so we kept up a little with her and her sister. Surely there is so much more to tell about her life, but here’s just this: just recently she got married. It was too far for us to go – not really the distance, but the time and money. And then we saw the photos on Facebook.

She has gone from being the girl I met to a bride and considerably more. I got to see the photos – so much more than nothing – so much less than being there.

In my grandfather’s day, the girl that you met became the young woman that you saw married - and also so many of the moments in between. Significant aspects of space and time where different then.

I have some thinking to do to make more sense out of this. I met a girl. Today I know more of her than I might. And less.