BACK TO THE ARCHIVES: When I look for something I wrote awhile ago to make up for the fact that I don’t have anything new to serve up, I usually go back to what I was thinking five or 10 or 15 years ago — so today I randomly went back seven years to see what I was writing about then. This is from Feb. 15, 2019.
I study Ray Bradbury because I wish to convey joy and wonder the way he does with his words … or Paul Harvey.
I’ll always remember Paul Harvey describing the amazing car of the future, rhapsodizing about its many features and technological wonders for three or four minutes, and then revealing he had just described his new 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.
Ray Bradbury and Paul Harvey were so good at using words to create that excitement in your chest as you breathe more rapidly because what you’re seeing is so wondrous … to call the reader or listener’s attention to the miraculous right before your eyes …
On the other side of this pane of glass, the wind howls. And the air is so cold that my flesh would freeze in minutes.
Yet here I am, barefoot, wrapped in a big comfortable easy chair, a bright light over my shoulder and springlike temperatures as I calmly write in a journal.
This is not the grateful warmth of a fire built in a cave or crude shelter. It’s a cushioned bubble of comfort that my ancestors would consider luxury.
Like Bradbury and Harvey, I want to pick up the ordinary, hold it up and proclaim, “Look! See! Isn’t this fine?”
So much we take for granted would have looked like magic not so long ago, and but for the hard work of mind and muscle to make it so, it would all still be possible only by magic. But the idea was conceived and the work was done, and today we reap the benefits of a better life where comfort and warmth through bitter winter is possible after all.
If we want a life even better than this, we need to conceive it and do the work. If we wish to maintain this life, we need to do the maintenance work.
While you’re busy working, there’s little-to-no time to squabble over what someone else has earned … or whether someone else has squandered … or other petty quarrels. You just work, and the world gets better for your efforts.
Imagine a better world and get down to making it. That’s all there is to it …
Make no mistake: It’s simple to say and so hard to accomplish.
But still: Do the work.
