It is actually a very negative thought because if we don't turn around there will be no humanity in a hundred years
Wow. A very interesting thought. Everything done by everyone will impact the future because it is a part of the whole? I have a hard time stretching to that end point. Some of the ancient Greeks are one thing but many people have walked a meaningless existence on this earth and have been reduced to ashes and forgotten about. Which ones of us will rise to the importance of a Greek philosopher? Certaintly not me. Some of my work, love, and good deeds that I have spread during my lifetime may live on a few years after I am dead but as each generation passes, that impact lessons.
I think we become the artist of our own life. We have to shape it deliberately. I think it's important to live mindfully just because we do not know what will carry on into the future.
My house is 150 years old. The oak floor I walk on is about 90 years old. What I like is to go down cellar and look up at the old floor it covers. Some of the planks are 15+ inches wide. I like to think of the years it took nature to grow those trees, to think of the people who cut them and milled them, to appreciate the builders whose work lives on to shelter me here in this century.
Sometimes I run into parents of children I had 25 years ago in preschool. They will tell me that their children never lost the habits of inquiry that I fostered, or the executive function skills I tried so hard to inculcate. How much of that was original to the child and how much was me? Who knows? But I do know that some of it was me...
I prefer to believe everything matters to a greater or lesser degree. I am not religious at all, but I do believe that that is what the "not a sparrow falls" piece of the bible means. [that WAS the bible--wasn't it? lol]
I'd have to agree, because we have no way of knowing what small thing can be an irreplaceable link in the whole. I visualize all of time - past, present, & future - as a web, the tiniest vibration has a ripple effect. There was a movie several years ago called "The Butterfly Effect" that captures the idea.
Few of us will achieve the historic stature of a Greek philosopher. But who knew how a small hominid nicknamed Lucy would impact anthropology? The ordinary citizens of Pompeii are not known to us by name, but their effect on us in death cannot be described with words. The unnamed workmen who crafted Stonehenge, the pyramids, & St. Peter's Basilica are long gone, but they certainly are not gone from our thoughts. The same can be said of people today who work at NASA, marine biologists studying in the Arctic, the people working at the Svalbard Global Seed Bank in Norway... We don't know their names, but everyone makes an indelible contribution to the whole of human history in their own way.
posted by Sylk
7 days ago
OOh Ahhh Im jumping up and down got to answer this before I read the rest
I love what you said...........Winston Churchill said that we are all a link in the chain of history......and I know this much. In England we are very much a part of our past. I remember going to church one time when over there on holiday.....the pastor was talking about King Henry V as though he were still alive. Can not recall now what he was saying but it made me think a lot......especially for us with a Royal Family, the continuity that gives us as a people. We are a part of our past and so each of us do make an impression on the future whether it be good or bad. EACH of us a link in that chain. You are right, what happens today does make a difference in 100 years. Especially conserving this planet. Great men will always be remembered as will unfortunately the Charles Mansons.
