When I was a little boy, I didn’t know what to make of the future. Future to me was moving up a grade and into a fresh desk in a new classroom with an unfamiliar teacher. Another new box of pencil crayons of varying lengths, assembled from the leftovers of years past. The new year would last an eternity, until at last, summer arrived, and then passed, and a new adventure began. So it was through elementary school. And through secondary school. University came, and the future suddenly grew more complex. For once, school would not be followed by school. Without a vision of the years ahead, I worried. I left, I worked for a year, and I returned. I studied other options, and I returned to the program in which I first enrolled. I worked hard, all the while wondering what I was really working towards. Experience it, they said. Learn while you can, and don’t just go for the degree.
A family was not on the horizon, nor even a spouse. A career of undetermined nature was skeptically anticipated, with much fear of failure. Technological advances were unknown, societal changes unimagined, and familial relationships questioned. With a future that felt as though it wouldn’t even exist, what was I to think? How does a person act when it seems that the choices and decisions of the present will hold no impact on the events in times to come? … if there even is a time to come.
When we had settled and completed the first tour, we descended into the Circus Maximus. Once a grand stadium, lined with statues and spectators, now nothing more than a grassy field; a large embankment on one side, a hill topped with ruins on the other. We revealed a frisbee, tattered and worn, it’s white surface marked with the scars of countless wayward landings. Across the circle it flew; to one side.. then to the other. Hand, fingertip, air. The waltz of the frisbee: A catch, a step, a spin, a arc of the wrist, another successful flight. We were carefree. The history by which we were surrounded embraced our dance, and we had no concern for the future. We were children of a new age, playing the part we were meant to play.
For everything I experienced, and everything that may be yet to come, this is what I will remember. The simplicity of centuries playing as one.
The future I hadn’t known in my youth was planned to be ill-defined. It was meant to be pursued… to be sought out, to be discovered. A simple act would reveal the present step, and no more. A white ghost floating through the Roman sky. It was made to fly, to be caught, and to be set free once more.
So shall it be with me.
