compromise and radiation

my dad once told me that if we could see every single radio transmission that went trailing through the air around us, the world would be blackened and dark by them.

if you want something done right, do it yourself, eh?

was it Gandhi who said that you should 'be the change you wish to see in the world'? on sunday one of the speakers at church read a quote about the radiation each human being gives out every day without thinking. the point was that we should all become responsible for that radiation, and train ourselves to think about it.

but we can't see it.

we can't see a lot of things. china. the bottom of the ocean. tomorrow. yesterday. proof is for mathemeticians.

to trade truth for easy assumptions and unchanging memories.

to trade tomorrow for right now and dreams for money and far away for someday.

to trade. give. slack. push. pull. this and that.

all sticks have two ends.

in The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis reminds us in a roundabaout way, through the voice of a demon, that everything we do affects our spirit. the cracking of our knuckles. the rolling of our eyes. whether we kneel to say that prayer or simply think it laying in bed as we fall asleep. everything.

does it affect the next guy just as well? how we carry ourselves as we walk into the office? the expression on our face as we silently walk across the street? the three minutes of fidgety silence there is before we make up our mind for the waitress?

i've been taught that everyone gets their share of light. and then they give it oil or let it flicker as they will for the rest of their life, throwing shadows carelessly as they go.

so you pull over to the side of the canyon road and hike up a smooth and awesome rock face. you don't notice how steep it is at all until you stop and your worn sneakers slide a little on the sandstone. you keep climbing, defying gravity with momentum and traction. you stop, turn around, and look down. there is far more of the smooth stone sloping away from you there than you ever saw as you ran up. it all spreads out around and down, yards and yards, to the little snowbank you crossed when you first started. you've left no footprints you can see. but you know you only came up one way out of millions of ways. one narrow path out of all the other ways you didn't come. all the millions of ways connected to this single spot.

what difference does it make? you see no footprints. the rock is too smooth and too hard to take them.

you can't change the past. but in the next second you can learn something new. you can say something you've never said before. you can walk a different way.

yeah, and what difference will it make?

it'll be different, silly. that's what. whether or not it means anything is up to you.