Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Dirty Thoughts

Yesterday while serving as an election judge the evening sunlight started to filter in through the windows near the top of the room in which our election was taking place. It so happened that my role at the moment was to help people deposit their paper ballots into the electronic voting machine. Since that role's most challenging task is to hand "I Voted!" stickers to voters, I had plenty of time to stare into space (I think the ratio there may be even higher than the guys who hold the "Slow" signs in construction zones). It caught my eye that the sunlight bounced off hundreds of thousands of particles of dust floating softly through the air. That dust seemed not unlike misfortune.

Dust is everywhere we go. We can take great steps to reduce it, but we cannot escape it. It can irritate in the smallest doses, it can kill in the largest. It doesn't help to ignore it entirely. But it does help to accept that it's merely part of the air, and to relish the cleanliness and vastness of the rest.

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