Was it just me, or did all of us forget to take a moment earlier this year—on May 18—to observe the 45th anniversary of the cataclysmic eruption of Mount St. Helens? By today’s standards, the records of which seem to be broken with every new day, the most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history might not be particularly newsworthy: “Only” fifty-seven people were killed as a result of the explosive reconfiguration of the volcano, which is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire. We have grown accustomed to all sorts of natural disasters, including monstrous hurricanes like Melissa, which is at this moment about to cause widespread devastation in and around the Caribbean. As I write this, a few deaths and injuries attributed to Melissa already have been reported, several hours before landfall. Only after the storm has passed and its impacts assessed will we know how many deaths and injuries it left in its wake. A reliable estimate of property damage may not be had for months. Whatever the storm’s toll, how will it compare to the unthinkably powerful volcano that left the Pacific Northwest reeling? I suspect Melissa will eclipse many, if not all, of Mount St. Helen’s tolls: 200 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles of railways, and 185 miles of highway were destroyed. The destructive power of one powerful volcano and one ferocious hurricane, though, seem almost inconsequential when examined in the context of hundreds or thousands of other catastrophes: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the terrorist attacks of September 11, 20001; the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD; the Texas City disaster of 1947; innumerable earthquakes and tsunamis; the sinking of the Titanic in 1912…and on and on and on and on. Airplane crashes, massive forest fires, floods, wars, large-scale suicides among members of cults, and…the list is never-ending and ever-worsening. Nature subjects us to such torment, but nothing compares to the agony we bring upon ourselves.
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Let your home be your mast and not your anchor.
~ Kahlil Gibran ~
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If the internet is to be believed, Jonathan—the Seychelles giant tortoise—is said to be the oldest known land animal in the world, at 193 years of age. Claims have been made (but not confirmed) that Alagba the African Spur-Thighed Tortoise lived an incredible 344 years. There have been other turtles and tortoises whose claimed life-spans have approached or exceeded 200 years. Greenland sharks are said to live up to or beyond 500 years. A 2012 study published in the journal Chemical Geology estimated that a glass sponge belonging to the species Monorhaphis chuni was about 11,000 years old. Turritopsis dohrnii (a jellyfish) and hydra (a group of small invertebrates with soft bodies that resemble jellyfish) are said to be, potentially, immortal. At what point does a very long life—or immortality—become an intolerable burden? These long-lived examples are exceptions, of course; most creatures die long before they reach 100 years of age. Look at me, for example; battling to add a day or a week or a month or a year at a time to my record-breaking 72 years (so far).
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Wisdom is a product of experience…or observation…untainted by opinion. In either case, time provides the milieu that allows wisdom to take root and grow. In a sense, time is a cousin of growth media used to cultivate bacteria in the lab. Wisdom, then, is the bacterial equivalent of understanding…which is fed by knowledge.
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Rules, regulations, and governance in general are necessary only because humans are innately incapable of behaving decently without enforceable instructions. We require the imposition of constraints to prevent us from allowing unchecked savagery to drive our behavior. Those of us who recognize the inappropriateness of our natural inclination to employ nuclear weapons, when slingshots would serve the purpose, understand the urgency of the need for self-control. The rest may be controlled by placing them in physical restraints or disciplining them with something just short of a guillotine. No, not seriously.
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Yesterday afternoon, I spent time listening to two of my favorite pieces of music by Foo Fighters, namely Times Like These and Making a Fire. This morning, I listened to Tom Waits’ gravelly voice deliver Bottom of the World. A few days earlier, my musical interests focused on contemporary piano tunes, very light and soothing. At this moment, I am in the mood for deep silence, punctuated by the gentle soft sounds of bells, far off in the distance, beyond the hills where pleasant people reside in impregnable fortresses crafted of stone and feathers. Instead, I hear rain and thunder and watch lightning flow from the sky; a river of jagged, neon-blue lava. Earth music. Sky music. The unmistakable sound of Zeus, coughing as he reaches for a lozenge to sooth his throat and his soul. Neptune rests on a Roman beach, feeding daffodils to a flock of winged zebras, while waiting for the storm to recover its strength. Neptune does not recognize the supremacy of Zeus, but he allows the Greek god to fly with his striped horses on occasion. If only we all were so accommodating, we could breathe under water and write entire novels in Greek cursive.
