All we have is the time we spend

Here I sit, in one of the most desirable cities in the richest country the world has ever known, among people so privileged and isolated from global realities that most of my fellow Americans don't have even a vague idea of what a pampered existence they have come to take for granted.

I do know, but only because I refused to go to fight in the Vietnam War when I was drafted in 1969; instead, I escaped this country as a Peace Corps Volunteer to Afghanistan. By the time the draft board caught up with me, I was in Kabul, and the Peace Corps, bless them, ruled that it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to voluntarily return to the U.S. and go into the military, or remain in one of the most remote of all Central Asian countries to teach English for two years.

Not a difficult decision. We were studying Dari, the local dialect of Farsi (Persian), which was at that time was the main language of government, education, and business in a fragile emerging democracy (actually a benign kingdom) that was Afghanistan in that era.

I scored the highest in our group of Volunteers on the language proficiency test after the three-month intensive training, and my wife scored second highest. Our reward was that we got to pick the part of the country where we would be stationed, so we chose the most remote town available -- Taloqan -- in the far northwest, not far from the wild region where China, Russia, Kashmir, Pakistan, and Afghanistan all come together, along the narrow Wakhan Corridor.

In those days, this area was an ungovernable mountainous tier where rival groups of marauders -- Kirghiz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkoman -- not to mention various nomadic tribes, the kochi, the gypsies -- all raided each other and all of the towns along this stretch of the ancient Silk Route made famous by Marco Polo with such regularity that no one dared travel the roads at night unless they were heavily armed.

In our time in Taloqan, we witnessed what it is like for a tribal society to try and make the transition to a modern democracy. Largely a Sunni country, Afghanistan was far more receptive to a separation of church and state than neighboring Iran, where the Shia majority insists on a merging of government and religion, which upon a close reading of the Quran, is arguably the correct interpretation of Islamic theology.

Illiteracy was so much the norm in Taloqan that even as a semi-fluent (3+ on a scale of 5) Dari speaker, my primitive writing and reading ability in the Arabic script that was used by Dari-speakers in letters and reports was probably better than 90% of the local population.

Therefore, there were professional letter-writers in the town's bazaars to serve the local population's needs to communicate with relatives or friends in distant cities.

And so much more. But I fear I am growing tired tonight. The title of this post refers to a sense I have that the more conscious we become about how we actually spend our time, day to day, the better we will feel as our time to exit this life approaches.

Most of the people I knew in Taloqan of any age, perhaps all of them, are now dead. Yet I live on, for now. Vivid memories of faces are small comfort in the knowledge that those lives have almost certainly been squandered.

We live here, in the fattest and most entitled of lands. How can we find our way to the place we need to go -- adopting a modesty, an asceticism, a sustainable lifestyle, a smaller footprint than we now so grossly create through our wasteful consumer lifestyle?

When will we see our way forward clearly? When will those with SUVs sporting environmental messages finally pull over to the side of the road, abandon their climate-destroying machines, and start again walking on foot toward the future that otherwise will never arrive for our children and grandchildren.

Will it take an eco-disaster for us to act? The answer to that question is truly, Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the wind."

And, ask not for whom that final wind blows, my friend, because you already know the answer. As Katrina blew into the Gulf Coast of Mississippi a year and a half ago, destroying all that residents there held dear, this global climate change wind blows toward you and toward me.

There will be no escape.

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