We are all just passing through. That was brought home to me by our house moving.
We lived in our old house for thirty years. We put in our alterations and improvements, decorated and adorned, and then we left and moved on. I hope we left it better than it was.
Thirty years seems a long time but that house was three hundred years old. We bought it. We paid off the mortgage and owned it. Yet we did not really own it at all. We merely borrowed it for a tenth of its life. We were just passing through.
Somebody else is living in our old house. It is hard to imagine them there. It felt like our home.
Our new house is being made into a home. We have brought all our things with us. We have placed the furniture, put up the photos and pictures, put the books in the bookcases, and arranged our things around us. It has the same feel as our last house. We are comfortable here. There were problems to solve and much still requires work. Sometimes it feels like home and sometimes it feels like we are on holiday here. I’m sure that when I have sorted my room, brought my CDs, vinyl and books out of store and arranged my room, it will feel like home. We will make our improvements and alterations. I hope we will make it better than it was.
Looking ahead – one way or another we shall move on. The new house will remain. We were just passing through.
Human beings are recent. We have only been around 200,000 years. In that time we have spread out of Africa to colonise the whole world. We have increased our numbers to over 7 billion. There are so many of us that we are destroying the natural world at a rate of knots, sending thousands of species crashing to extinction and altering the climate of the planet.
Presently we occupy the planet. We seem invincible. It is an illusion. We are only passing through. Will we leave the planet better than it was?
