Missed Moose

As we were driving along the Alaska Highway yesterday, I caught sight of a moose feeding in a pond beside the highway. It seems so contented, bobbing around in the shallow water, head diving down for the soft weeds and plants on the bottom of the pond, mindless of the trucks and cars pounding by on the highway above. We stopped to take some pictures. Since the pond was at a bit of a distance, we used the short range telephoto lens. Shortly after, Katherine went to look at the pictures and discovered there was a malfunction in the camera; there were no moose pictures. We went back to try again, but the moose had moved on.

Life is kind of like that. You get to a place that seems so good, so easy, where everything is going right, where life seems to work. Then something happens, a malfunction in the universe, and your life is thrown off kilter. You try to go back to where it was before, but whatever was behind you is gone. Life has moved one once again. You can try to go back, but it just isn't the same.

There has been no seminal event lately for me, no missed camera shots. My life is simply moving forward. There is no going back. I am getting weaker. Hotel carpets are getting harder for me to transit. Transfers are tougher than they were a while ago. My arms are weakening. My days seem less alive. My lens on life is malfunctioning. I would like to go back to where it was before, even as little as yesterday. But yesterday is like those failed pictures, a lost image never to be recaptured.

The Nihilist in me says there is no point to all of this, that all I am is a part of a large happenstance. The Monotheist in me says there must be a purpose in all this, or else why would I be here; it's a self-centered, egotistical view that could only come from homo sapiens. Or there is always the Forrest Gump view, "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."

I don't think it matters. There are no pictures of the moose. I can't go back to yesterday. Tomorrow is coming regardless. I think I am mostly just along for the ride.