Jamie

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself" -- Albert Camus“Do you ever contemplate your place in this world?” she asked without ever looking at me. She did not even stop twirling her finger in the sand, something her fidgety self felt compelled to do from the moment we sat down on the beach.I was watching the seas meet the sky and listening to the tide crash against the shore. I only heard the tail end of her question, but I knew it would be best to come up with an answer off the cuff rather than ask her to repeat it. I knew her well enough to understand the kind of questions she would ask anyway. Such was the danger of befriending a philosophy major.“No,” I said. “I am not that deep.”She finally looked up at me with brow knit. She stopped twirling her finger in the sand long enough to give me a disbelieving nudge on my upper arm. It was enough to finally draw my attention away from the water.“What?” I asked in mock surprise.“You. You are one of the most reserved people I know. Half the people you know think there is nothing going on in that head of yours and the other half are dying to pick your brain. I am in the latter half,” she said.I let out a deep sigh. This was not something I wanted to talk about.“About seven or eight years ago, I thought I was going to be a rich lawyer and beat a pathway to the governor’s mansion before I was fifty. At some point, I outgrew the idea, realized I might make a good but not great living, and could not win a city council seat with my prickly as a porcupine personality. Now that idea is even gone with my health being what it is. So, no, I do not contemplate my place in this world.”“Why not?” she asked.I took a moment to be thrilled I hit the nail on the head in figuring out her original question. I hate looking like a clueless ninny. The joy did not last long, of course. Reality is a constant companion.“My world is…small. Smaller than it has ever been. My place is irrelevant.” I told her.“Oh, good grief,” she grumbled. She turned away from me and took a quick scan of the surrounding sand. She picked up four seashells scattered about and then placed them in a formation between us. As usual, I braced myself. I knew she was about to get a poignant lesson even though I had no idea what it might be.“Pick one up. Any one of them,” she said.I played along, hovering my hand over all four before I picked the one closest to her. I held it in my hand and looked up at her quizzically.“Now, what have you changed?” she asked.“Nothing,” I said. She rolled her eyes.“Come on. Think a little.”“All, right. There were four and then I removed one. Only three remain,” I answered.“That is why you are so cynical. You fail to see the big picture. You saw four shells and now there are three. You fail to realize those four shells, in that place, in that time, were a component of the entire world before you moved one. You have not just moved one shell. You have changed the entire world,” she told me.I looked at the shell in my hand, tossed it into the air, and caught it again. I cannot tell you how much I hated it when she did these things to me.“You know, that sounds like some hokey junk George Harrison would write a song about,” I quipped.“Could you just let me bask in the moment of using my liberal arts degree? Just once?” she asked mockingly.We both quietly stared off into the setting sun over the ocean waves. I let her bask. I had a lot of other things to think about.I also have a YouTube channel (a video I created is above) and a regularly updated blog called Eye of Polyphemus . Feel free to visit both and let me know what you think.