So many things depend upon the value of moments. It’s often commented, for example, that basketball games seem to come down to the last few seconds of play: a last-minute drive to the basket; a fadeaway three pointer leaving the point guard’s fingertips a millisecond before the final buzzer.
Sadly, it’s not too hard to visualize a day in the not-so-distant future when an existential buzzer of some kind puts an end to humanity’s game once and for all; when the consequences of fortune, fate, or human activity have rendered the surface of this once bountiful world more-or-less inhospitable to most forms of life. At this time, it’s looking diminishingly likely that homo sapiens will have developed the means to find some sanctuary in the stars by then, or will have attained the will and wherewithal to begin civilization anew on a conveniently welcoming nearby world. Perhaps, for a while at least, certain scurrying and burrowing things—rodents, earwigs, and billionaires, for instance—will carry on some form of subterranean existence safely away from all the radiation and cyclones drifting about above. For some reason, though, I don’t find this thought as comforting as maybe I should.
If I’m being honest, there’s almost no doubt in my mind that these are the last few days, weeks, months, or (at the outside) years of the Holocene remaining to us. If there’s any consolation to be had in all of this, it’s that nothing makes time feel more precious and rare than the realization that there’s not much more left of it. In the darkness of the overcast future, the days of the here-and-now can take on an almost fairytale glow as we go about our mundane lives, doing nothing out of the ordinary, but everything that’s important. Doing vital things like sleeping in late and making waffles. Taking salsa dancing lessons. Practicing calligraphy. Memorizing poetry. Building Lego spaceships. Cuddling together under electric blankets. Shuffling through shag carpeting and zapping each other with static electricity. Painting the living room eggplant purple. Getting saucy together by candlelight. Reading The Hobbit. Listening to Aretha Franklin or Amyl and the Sniffers. Tobogganing at sunset. Skating on the river at dawn. Searching for owls with flashlights. Shopping in thrift stores on rainy Saturday afternoons, pricing silk lampshades and ceramic panthers, or trying on shiny satin jackets and moth-eaten fur hats. Watching vintage Hollywood movies over a dinner of mini Mars bars and reheated egg rolls. Drifting off under constellations of glow-the-the-dark stars glued to the ceiling. Stuff like that.
Like a basketball lazily, capriciously circling the rim, the world as we’ve known it is wobbling on the edge of oblivion. But there is still some time left – perhaps seasons, or perhaps longer – while we hold each other tight, and hold our breaths, and watch the great planet spin.
As some people know, lifetimes and lifetimes can be lived in a single day. We may not have time to build pleasure domes on Venus, but I bet there’s enough time for all of the above, and plenty more besides. Let’s hope so, at least.
