Time In A Bottle

About twenty years ago I was squirrel hunting near a section of marsh that I had not walked around since I was a small child. Way above the normal high tide mark I found an old bottle. It had a top on it and was clear and easy to see though.

 Inside it was a piece of folded paper. The top was not easy to remove but it came off with some hard twists. The hand writing on the note was beautiful. It was dated before the frst World War. The writer was a young man traveling and working his way though the southeast. He talked a bit about his life and explained that he put this message in the bottle and set it to sea (did not say where)and asked the finder send him a note to his home in Maryland to let him know that it had been recovered.

I put it back in the bottle and headed home. I made a few phone calls concerning my very unusual discovery. About the third time that I removed it from the bottle I noticed that it was much more fragile and brittle.

A few days later I opened the bottle to find the paper so deteriorated that it essentially disintegrated upon touch. It could not be unrolled and none of the words were any longer legible. Of course, it likely never had any value except as a personal curiosity.

But it could have been saved.

It could have been preserved. Had I been willing to do the work to find an expert who could have kept it in the correct environment and who could have taught me how to maintain it, I would still have this little piece of time safely sealed in a bottle.

But I was younger, impatient, and most of all I was busy with what the rest of the world calls, "having a life."

Nothing is more detrimental to  having a life with meaning, a life  that focuses on building something  bigger than one's self, than "having a life."

"Having a life" leads to a trivial existence with meaningless priorities. It leads to simply trying to figure out the easiest way instead of the most  efficient way.

Ultimately it leads to a huge volume of excuses, with endless new editions and reprints, but only a small sticky note sized list of solutions and accomplishments.

For everything there is a season. As every horse culture that has existed in history has shown the taming and training of horses can be, and often was, child's play. It still can, and should, be.

But the actual work of preserving these horses can only be successfully done by those old enough to realize what a worthless pursuit "having a life " is. The hard work of preservation is, with a few rare exceptions, left to those whose only interest in life is that it have meaning.

And that is why one is never to old to begin to work to preserve these nearly extinct horses. That is why one is never too old to begin to work to develop a riding and training program  that serves the needs of those that your community has left behind.

That is why one is never too old to look ahead with hope.

It is an ironic aspect of human existence that as our eyesight fades, our vision can become clearer. Only those who have through past  decades have the vision to see what is possible in future decades.

The seeds of our program were planted about 18 years ago. I once wished that I had begun thirty years ago.

 I no longer have that wish.

That would not have worked well. Thirty years ago I "had a life". It's focus was on meetings, martini's and the accumulation of power.

Now I have a life whose only focus is  meaning.