Today’s Word: Paragliding


Ruma sat in staring awe of her old friend, Airia. Five years had changed the girl -- no woman -- so much, that Ruma wondered if it were possible the two could be the same. And that was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? The two were the same; the girl then, the woman now.

"And so we sit here, but we are also sitting in that little restaurant in Paris we loved so much, and we're paragliding back in Hawaii when we were teenagers, and we're talking on the phone about Crast Williams while trying on outfits for the winter ball. . . all of it, now, then and when," said Airia.

Ruma shook her head. "I still don't understand, not really. You're saying that time is perspective, cognition. That only our consciousness places us here and now, when really we are spread out over all the time of our lives like --" Ruma searched for the right words, "-- like jam on toast."

Airia chuckled. "Something like that. But it's less to do with perception than acceptance. We are here, because at some point in our time -- during lives which may be much longer than we realize -- we made a choice to invest ourselves in what we call the present. But that doesn't preclude the fact that we were alive a moment ago, and we are still alive a moment ago, a year, a decade, so on. We still live in those times. The echo of our presence is not diminished by the passing of time. We are, were, and will be."

"Eternal."

Airia flashed that old smile that said she had some secret to tell.

"Perhaps."