Future

"I have seen the future and it's still in the future"...the future of George Jetson at least.  I'm not quite sure when that quote was written originally, but it us just as relevant now.

I'm rereading a book originally written over 10 years ago that is a compilation of the previous 10 years marvelling at the technology advances in the 90's and also making light of some of our collective notions of the future back then.

As my thoughts often do, they turned toward the family. In a week Yusuf will start kindergarten which just blows my mind and Nooriya is on the verge of reading and doing so many new things.

Yusuf is asking me so many intelligent questions and Nooriya is following his lead. The questions are getting to be too hard for me and we are frequently looking things up in books and Googling. The last few months have been very transformative for me as a parent. Much of my caregiving is becoming teaching and explaining. Less is meeting their basic needs. It's awesome. I am in the best place I've ever been with Zahra too.

I feel much the same as I have for the last twenty years or so. Feeling as if I'm in and just entering the best stage of my life.

Zahra and I think about the future as in the next six months or year, but I don't really think seriously past that.

This book makes so obvious to me how fast things change. I don't know if the author's intent is to push me to dream about the future that might be. If that's the case the author has failed because it is making me focus on right now. Right now is a 'simpler time' just as two years ago was 'simpler' and six year's ago was even 'simpler' and a hundred years.... Inshallah ten years will pass and instead of longing for a 'simpler' time then I will look around and appreciate the simpleness then. And Inshallah ten years after that and ten years after that and ten years....

Life as a zoo

I'm rereading a book I first read almost ten years ago. A small chapter I read fast the first time caught my attention and is packed with lines to remember.

The short passage is about taking care of animals in a zoo. The thinking about animals resonates so much with me about people and ourplace. In essence, the chapter is about escape. This quote sums up the chapter very well.

"Everything in an enclosure must be just right-in other words, within the limits of an animal's ability to adapt"

We parallel animals in a zoo in so many ways. There is one major difference I see. Unlike animals that may try to escape the zoo from something, we are escaping to something.