Prelude to an Epilogue

One has to wonder what it's all about. Each day goes by. Each life goes on. Decisions are made: the blue shirt over the yellow, the expressway over the boulevard, the salad over the sandwich, the semicolon over the period; a million little choices are made throughout each day. What does it add up to, when (if?) it's added up? Is there a value system that weighs one choice over another? Is the decision to have coffee over tea with breakfast of the same value as the decision to return the wallet with the money still in it?

At first blush, the answer, of course, is no. Whether to leave the money in the wallet or not is a form of ethical dilemma. There is no ethical or moral element to the choice of beverage, is there? There could be. Where and how is the coffee or tea grown? Who has toiled (or even suffered) to prepare the means of your morning cup?


And here is where my reverie takes me. This steaming cup of brown liquid, this coffee (that, at this point in my life, is no decision at all), comes to me from five thousand miles away. In the planting, growing, harvesting, roasting, packaging, shipping of this coffee, in the swirl of life around this commodity, someone had an idea that made them stop what he/she was doing for a moment. Someone had a memory that made her smile. Someone recalled something that made him frown. Someone had a bad day. Someone had a good day. Someone whistled. Someone sang. Someone made a mistake. Someone made a discovery. Someone had a phone call. Someone worked distracted by something that was happening at home. Someone flirted with a coworker, a stranger. Someone ate. The sun shone. It rained.

What am I getting at? So much of our time is spent taking things for granted, not realizing the story of how things come to us, not keeping in mind that a billion or more other worlds are being lived in beyond our own. I guess, today, I'm deciding not to ignore these things.