A Ride

The story I have to tell is about how, in the words of William James, “the deepest human life is everywhere.” The coordinates of a meaningful life—the stars, in my analogy—are there for any of us to see and puzzle out. The questions, stories, and injunctions of the great philosophers aren’t the speeches of angels loafing in their celestial abodes. Even the most formidable thinkers speak to us out of lives pretty much like our own, with their daily routines, their little aches and pains and pleasures, and their occasional upheavals. Their feet have no more wings than yours or mine.

“The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone” by Scott Samuelson

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Dear Alex,

On railroad tracks I walked last evening, just before sunset, looking at the junction where one of the two had no wooden boards. It was an obsolete path, one of lost value.

A few years ago I saw a cargo train zooming through the other functional track. In scream a life force, it gleamed with its fullness of weight and wonder, whisking moments away as soon as they come. Seconds more it was gone, terror and intrigue flashing in memory, another of evanescent value.

Or so we decide and evaluate: what is valuable, who gives value? How brief or lasting is it to you? In moments and momentum piling up to a dash through your lifelong course, which vanishing cargo of yours is more precious?

Of the few times I have boarded trains, I remember most subtly a museum tram from the early 1900s. It was an engineering beauty that used to carry urban passengers for a half century. Used to be of good use. Then worn out on tracks and vandalized. Restored, recast, now regal as the lives that used to fill and feed it. 

A year will soon be added to my decades. I miss the old tram, its beams and luggage racks bristling with handprints, the stillness of a stance in seconds, the roaring of life not to be missed, freight and mates carrying these “aches and pains and pleasures”, a puzzle, a query, a ride as daunting as irregular.

Yours, Kate