Imagine All the People

Can you imagine how many thoughts there have been. Ever. Imagine a catalog of all the thoughts of mankind through the ages. Forget the sheer volume. Imagine the content. I know I have lots of thoughts every minute. Many of those thoughts are pretty complex. At least I think they are. Some of them so complex for me that I cannot hold on to their meaning for very long. We all have thoughts like that. Everyone has thoughts like that. Imagine how many of those thoughts were original. Only a handful of people have actually captured those earth-shattering thoughts. A cataolg of human thought would contain ideas that would change life as we know it. Think of all the inventions that were never actualized, concepts never recorded, or theories never evaluated.

I was standing in the rain outside Brandon Veterinary Specialists–the emergency clinic just outside of Tampa–where I am working tonight. George–the technician working with me–was telling me that this building was built in the 60s. I wouldn’t have thought that there was anything here in the 60s at all. He says that this corner of the shopping center was once a movie theatre. I thought about the people who would come here to see movies–about how many of them are probably long dead. I thought about what I think about right after seeing a movie–how I often feel that my life has been changed by the movie I just saw. I thought about all the life-changing thoughts that were born and died right here in this tiny corner of a tiny shopping plaza in this tiny place. It makes me want to record my own thoughts. It makes me realize how futile it is to record my own thoughts.

About these ads