This particular day, sitting on this bench outside of the Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland, it started to rain lightly as my daughter toured inside of the building, and for some strange reason I opted to sit there on that bench.
Trinity College was founded in 1592. I remember thinking 'what was happening in 1592?' I had no idea until I looked it up on my iPhone.
I remember reading about a whole lot of fighting in Asia, between Korea and someone else...and there were murders in a castle in Scotland, a lot of people born and died that I had never heard of. I put the phone back into my pocket and stretched my legs out, but then took this shot you see here of my boots and the ancient cobblestones they rested upon.
Someone cut those stones, carried them to there, installed them, a very long time ago. We may never know who, long since dead, and yet I was taking the time to think to myself 'job well done, stone mason of old.'
In the next thought I contemplated if anyone will ever remember that some guy from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, USA sat on that bench and thought those thoughts. The answer was a resounding, no!
A woman came out of the door next to me to my left. She said hello. Her Irish accent was thick as she spoke...
"Typical Irish weather. Raining now, it'll snow within the hour and the sun will come back out afterwards."
I laughed and said hello back to her.
"Where you from?" she asked.
"Pennsylvania, USA. Visiting with my daughter. She's inside."
"You don't like libraries?" she asked.
"I do actually, and it's really odd I opted out of this one. Just felt like sitting here."
"In the rain..." she added.
'Yes," I said, laughing afterwards.
"You're from here I'm guessing?"
"How'd you guess that?" she joked.
She had a great sense of humor I was finding out, it was small talk for most of the conversation. I eventually told her about the podcast and took out the recorder. She said hello to family and friends.
That interview is on a podcast I have long since removed. There are a couple of hundred episodes I removed so as to give Bob and Bink a fair listen and not have people getting lost in those old episodes.
Somehow I'll archive them and make them available once again whenever I feel the need to torture myself for a week or so trying to figure out how to do that.
I often think about the people I've meet around the world. That's time traveling, going back into the past, though not physically just mentally. I try not to do it too often. You can easily get caught up in the past. It's sounds hard to believe but there are people that actually 'mentally' live back there.
Me on the other hand, I really try to make it a point to live in the now, right now, this second, aware of each single keyboard press as words form before me on this laptop as I do my best to convey the thoughts within my mind into a form that you can interpret, these words here compiled together.
'I'm a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been,' Robert Plant sings in the Led Zeppelin song, Kashmir. That's the song playing over and over in my head as I continue to type this.
We are all travelers of both time and space...which is a great thing, for it means we are indeed alive and living, creating memories, some indiscernible and some significant.
It's taken us our entire lives to be here, right here where we are at this very moment, every decision we've ever made, every action we have taken, every path, road, journey has led us here, to this very moment in time, to the place you are right now at this instant, and it has me wondering if you thought back then you would be where you are right now, and if so, are you happy with the destination?
If not there is still time as we all continue to travel into the future and make more decisions, make more memories.
A little deep thinking today.
Welcome to my world.
Live your life.
Make your memories.
Live your dreams.
It's not too late.
Make the best of each day you have here.
And making something 'better', doesn't necessarily have to be some significant event or change.
It could be as simple as being kind and empathetic towards others, and in that way your life is indeed making a significant difference in the lives of others as well as your own.
Have a fantastic day.
Thank you for being here.
Tony
