As in, that there is just no way to see. Not really. I mean, you can guess, and maybe take stock, haul in the extra jugs of water in case the power goes out, load up a few cases of Dinty Moore in case the road gets blocked, stuff a few bills under the mattress, and out in the garage hide the shotgun behind the Obama for Pres yard sign. We can sit down and plot the course: diploma jumping then a stopover at a career or two, maybe the Bay of Marriage, maybe smooth sailing on the seas of fortune and right on past the Cape of Fear and working hard and whateverittakes paying off in the big pay off. Of course, it is just as easy to glide overhead in daddy's Lear and watch the scrambling down yonder, all those little people like ants on a log in a vast and merciless sea, but either way, the outlook The Way it Is is the Way it Will Always Be, is a navigation tool used best by a ship for fools.
Recently I was part of a conversation that included the phrase have and have nots. Also, the assumption that this fact--that there are those of us and them over there and that what we see is what is, and will be. Which is an odd language, when you think about it, or pay attention to the stories, pilgrims as outcasts and coming to a new land, with new hopes, victims forging ahead and better because of. And I am sure why those ESL classes they give the refugees who land here are such a big hit: pear, pair, and pare notwithstanding, this is America after all, land of the free and the brave, Donald Trump and Oprah, Michael Jordan and American Idol. What they need to teach is them and us, and that there is no difference, despite the spelling. Because it is critical, and the only way to decipher the have and have not jargon. Which they will bump into and run up against and maybe hit their head on.
Navigating is of course all about looking ahead and making sure where you are headed is not into the rocks or over the edge, but away from disaster. Some people call this common sense, or planning for the future. But once you understand the limited sight distance, that the future is not only impossible to lock onto, but despite the computer models et al, it never happens the way they tell us or as many inches or more inches than we could ever imagine or how we had it planned or the way we fear, much less the way we assume, then it gets easier. And clearer, as the fog of assumption wans and what we see is that in the black hole of fate--that weird magnetic twist that sends the smallest boat right where it needs to go as fast as it knocks the wealthiest and most secure amongst us plunging to the bottom from what was touted as the safest the best the biggest--is that there is one word for it after all, and that it means luck, hope, fate, destiny and destination all in one nice easy to remember package. Once you see it, the big hand sweeping, the little hand marking the iotas of our lives around and around, then have and have not land in a different tense, from past to present perfect. And from sea to shining sea, where there is nothing truer than change, which is of course, the only glimmer about the future we can ever hope to begin to see.
