7:35 a.m. - Monday, Feb. 17, 2003
Ms Leslie Finds Her Word

I found my word.

I was rambling the other day about the meaning of life, or rather, the lack of meaning of life. If you know me, you know I do this sometimes. Then I got sidetracked and started on my rant about how we�re all time travelers and how we can speak to the future through what we leave behind. Then I began to wonder what word, if I could only send one single word to the future, what that word would be.

Karen (cosmicrayola) selected one for me and placed it as a gift in my guestbook. That word is �propitious�. Now don�t misunderstand; that�s a lovely word and an even better wish. I accept it gratefully in the spirit it was given. But it�s not my word to the future. I do sincerely hope for us all a propitious future, in the short run. But the future for all of us remains identical in the long run. In some ways, maybe that IS propitious. Certainly for the generations yet to arrive it is. They will need the space.

This morning I rode my air bike. I didn�t listen to music, and the TV is out of reach in the bedroom now. So I rode in silence; just listening to my breath, the whir of the electric fan blowing against my face, and the rhythmic sounds of the bike itself as I worked the pedals and the handgrips back and forth in the early morning. Before long body and mind both somehow became one with the whole process of expending energy; Making heat and setting it free, one calorie at a time, to return to the universe for it�s next purpose, whatever that may be. It was then that I heard, saw, felt, and even became my word.

It isn�t �love�. That poor word is one of the first to pop up as a candidate for propagation to the future. But love doesn�t come to everyone, neither romantic love, parental love, or that Christian love that some people earnestly cultivate. Besides, love doesn�t stand alone. You may call this heresy, but there�s a place for hate and mistrust as well as love. Anyone na�ve enough to think they love everyone will soon be destroyed by those forces opposite of love. And it is, you know, necessary for love to have an opposite. Otherwise, how could we recognize it?

�Balance� is an absolute necessity in the universe. There�s no love without rancor, no joy without sadness, no comfort without pain. But �balance� isn�t the word either. That word implies a world of black and white, with little room for shades, or even color. It also implies a sense of stasis; a state of unchanging equilibrium. That just sounds like another word for death to me.

It isn�t happiness, or peace; not knowledge or understanding. All of these things are good, positive things. They are something I�d wish for someone and something I�d encourage people to seek. And yet they�re not close enough to the center of the universe for me to choose any of them as my undying word.

My word is a wish, a goal, an exhortation and a state of being. It can be heard in any language or in no language at all. We recognize it with pure joy in music, yet it�s also found in mathematics, ecology, biology, chemistry, and most of all, in physics. It�s what we seek through all of our various religions, and what a mother obtains when she holds her infant to her breast. And it�s the exact opposite of chaos, which is, I believe the thing we all hate the most.

The word is �harmony�.

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