The present is always the time of consequence.

Too often do we cast all desires into the past or future.

There is no time but this in which we can act.

“History is not inevitable,” Golo Mann said as he watched the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic. Revisionist and cynics claim backward foresight.

“We all knew it was going to happen. Nothing could be done.” Falser words could not be said. We do not live in a hard-set cast like the pour for copper. Institutions for centuries can disappear overnight.

The flicker of flame and black smoke of turned oil vanished under the lambent cast of filament lights— whaling boats lost over the electric horizon.

The illusion of normalcy is maintained as even in the fall of empires you have to rise in the morning and sleep at night. There are still birthdays and smiles. Smaller and brittle, perhaps. But the human spirit does not extinguish in one fell swoop. History has shown otherwise.

There is no escaping the connection to the world. There is no gently laid salt line that keeps the spirits from the door. No pair of headphones, book, or music that can drown out the ever present thrum of the universe that pulses through us.

There is no salvation in ignorance. No prayer in despair that will save you from experiencing the breadth of existence.

The only destiny we can claim is breath.

So fill your lungs with the defiant crush of the unknown— and all that it contains— as if we are to make a wager. If we are to stand as a speck in the vastness of it all— why not dare to breathe once more. To realize that even the darkness cannot remain an unmovable force.

Like a dandelion pushing up through concrete— it’s bit by bit as you move towards daylight.