Another Year

Slaves of the Roman Empire constructed the coliseum in Rome.

   

It was not exactly a union job.

The owned workforce had no 15 minute coffee breaks or a scheduled lunch.

The slaves most certainly worked on weekends and did not have a 40 work week.

They and their lives were considered worthless.

And yet what struck me as I stood in the great Roman edifice was the utter grandeur and size of the building—and how it still remained. I pondered how many generations of people stood in my very place and saw what I was seeing.

I doubted that an enslaved worker who chiseled and carried stone ever could have imagined that their labor and sacrifice might be appreciated a thousand years later by a tourist like me.

It was and is fascinating to think that those who did not matter created something that did.

A thing of worth was built by the worthless.

It proves every life has significance.

And that is what I try to remember as my birthday comes and goes and I am left with universal existential questions like: Why am I here? And does my life have meaning?

I realize that they are questions that might never be answered in my lifetime.

Clarity from afar cannot be reached when you dwell within a capsule.

And so I can only trust that somehow in some way or ways known or unbeknownst to me, the world is better because of or in spite of me.

 Everything we do---including the mundane, has worth and meaning—even if it takes a thousand years for that worth and meaning to be determined.

     

And so I’ll keep doing what I am doing and think about it all again next August 30^th—when I am another year older and another year wiser.