My Clothes Don’t Fit Me Right

I was just reading the news stories when I came across an article that said they’d found a shoe at some site in England that dates back to the Iron Age (700-43 BC). The shoe was found where a fresh water well had been built and was being studied. They weren’t sure whether the shoe was placed at the site purposely, or whether it just came off some workmen in the mud during the construction of the well…I wonder what life was like during the Iron Age? ...I saw a show a few weeks back that went through the last day of the “Ice Man” (he’s the one that they found in the Alps near the Austrian border; he's 4000-5000 years old). Watching that show made me think about what his life must have been like.

We all go through this…wondering what it would be like to live in a different era and often wishing we could trade our lives (if only for a little while) for those of the past. Everyone always tells us how silly this desire is…, "What would you do without plumbing? What about all the diseases?" I don’t agree with the naysayers. I believe that when you think the whole picture through, there are reasons for our desire to escape back to our past. I think we all harbor memories of better lives and these memories call us back to times when we were closer to ourselves and more in touch with loved ones. I believe that the best and oldest souls leave this world and that with each generation the love and compassion that exists here is diminished. I feel like I’ve watched the process just in this lifetime. I know there were hardships in earlier times; this world was never a good place, but I don’t believe that the lives lived in those days were as empty as ours are or that they didn’t know the happiness that we share today. As for disease, we all die and I don’t know that a short life isn’t as good as a long one. I think I’d rather die from infection at 35 than linger with Alzheimer’s through my 70’s.

There’s a beautiful song written by Jimmy Buffett called, “A Pirate Looks at Forty”. Even when I was in High School (young and stupid), there was something about that song that touched my heart. I read Mutiny on the Bounty when I was about 10 and spent several weeks actually grieving for that fact that I couldn’t live in Tahiti in the 1700’s with some beautiful native woman. I’ve written here before about my lifelong desire to enter the woods…never to come back out. I think we are so out of touch with ourselves and the world that we long for a time when there was connection. When we lived in this world and when it was all around us all the time. As for me, I spend most of my time in front of this computer screen wishing that I had dirt under my feet.

We talk about how much we know today, but how much do we really know about the world (as compared to those who came before us)? ...Can you find your way by the stars? ...Do you know what plants to eat when you’re in the woods? ...Can you tell the weather by the look of the sky and the behavior of the animals? Almost anyone could have done this just a few generations ago. And what of your knowledge of today’s world? Do you really understand how your TV works? …Your computer? …A radio? …Atomic energy? So how smart do we really think we are? Could you get your dinner if you had to do more than drive through McDonalds? I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that proud of our progress and I’M AN ENGINEER!!!

For me, it would be to live amongst the Indians of the eastern woods before the arrival of the Europeans. I don’t kid myself that it would be an easy life, but it holds all the things that are important to me and I can’t think of any existence that would make me happier. ...Maybe it’s just a memory of a life well lived and enjoyed. I know that when I think about this, it makes me happy and tends to throw whatever hassles I have into perspective. If you have some place and time that speaks to your heart, be open to it. Don’t listen to those who would tell you that this is, “The Best of all possible worlds” (yes – I remember my Voltaire). If you can’t turn back time, be sure to carry clothes that fit you in your heart; you’ll find them very comfortable when this world weighs down on your shoulders.