A couple days ago I was watching a special on PBS. I’m not usually the PBS type of guy, largely because I hate sitting through all those interminable pleas for money.
They only seem to show really good stuff when there is a fund drive. This night was an exception. The show (American Masters: The Boomer List) was a series of interviews with Boomers, some very famous to our generation, others less so, or at least on the surface.
It was a really great documentary on my generation. Granted, I didn’t ask to be a Boomer. I was the result of a tryst between my parents, on a night when I can assume – this was 1957 after all – there was nothing on television.
Some of the ideas presented on this show may become future RobZerrvations. I was intrigued by Billy Joel’s observation that he didn’t want the American Dream because he grew up in it; the supposed idealized life that actually included a moody father, spousal and child abuse and bouts of depression and alcoholism. There was also a great piece by a Vietnam veteran who said that we are all victims of war, whether we fought in it or not, that we all have suffered from its effects, even if we weren’t the one to pull the trigger.
But the interview that really stuck with me was that of Deepak Chopra. Now, I’m not a huge Deepak fan or follower. I know who he is, of course, and I’ve seen him on a show or two over the years.
In this particular interview, he said something I found intriguing, something to the effect (and I am paraphrasing here), “We are just spiritual beings enjoying a human experience.”
I have often had that feeling. I guess it goes back to my youth when I had a recurring dream about my room floating away from my house and how I could see everything exactly as it was, except from above. It was as if I was flying through the neighborhood.
I’m still not sure it was a dream, for I don’t really know how I could have envisioned it in such detail, given that they didn’t have drones back then that could do the task on behalf of my spirit. To this day, I am pretty sure it happened, as it’s neither the first nor last time I’ve done a little traveling in this world when a car, plane or train wasn’t unavailable.
Perhaps I really am just a spiritual being enjoying the human experience before I decide to move on somewhere else and see what it’s like to be something or someone else – a single drop of rain, a speck of dust flying through the cosmos, or maybe Elvis in another dimension.
I sometimes wonder if we are given certain skills at specific stages in our lives, as if the universe or God fears that we would become stark raving lunatics if we understood bigger ideas than the ones we grasp onto in our younger days.
There was a time when I thought I knew it all. I also believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. All folly. I don’t these days. If anything, I now know how little I know. This could have been the case all along; it’s just now I’m old enough to be honest about it. After all, how much can one learn in a lifetime, since even at 80 or 85 years it’s just a drop in the bucket when you consider the age of the universe or even the years mankind has called earth home?
If I am just a spiritual being enjoying the human experience, I can only assume I’ve been here a time or two before, taking in the whole thing. There’s a lot of familiarity here, not only with people and places, but events. Sometimes it feels very Groundhogs Day (the movie, not the actual day).
I do have to wonder where else I’ve been. It would have been really considerate of the powers that be to have provided us with a Universal Passport, stamped with all our comings and goings in our many travels. Maybe there is such a thing, but it’s just been misplaced. Or perhaps it’s waiting for me at Departures.
I can just see it now. There I am, passing on from this space to the next, being stopped at Customs on the way out. There, a kindly old Customs clerk hands me a numbered key and points to endless row of storage lockers to my right.
I dutifully take my key, find the corresponding box, dust away the cobwebs and open the door. Inside is everything I left behind when I arrived here on Earth oh, so many years ago. I breathe a sigh of relief, largely because I realize that’s where my Universal Passport had been all along.
I pick it up, take it with me through the line, the guy at the end stamps it with “Earth: The Human Experience” and sends me off to my gate to make my connecting flight to some other spirit theme park.
Sure, it’s easy to dismiss this as nonsense or the meanderings of a wishful thinker. But no one really knows what happens at the end. We may just call Scene and fade to black, or we may have another gig in another place or time, stepping through the darkness of one curtain call and into the spotlight shining on another stage, either still here on this big blue ball or somewhere that is beyond our imagination, or at least, the imagination we are able to use here.
I still wonder about that imagination I had as a little boy, as I floated aimlessly above the corner of my house, looking down on the street and houses below. Was it just imagination? Or was my seemingly restless soul having it’s first outing in its new environment, seeing if I really wanted to stay here or move on immediately to the next destination, another stamp on the passport of existence.
In the Emerald City, wondering if my departure will be delayed (hope, hope),
– Robb