If we begin to sway

For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories changes and crash, when schools philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back.
--Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

photo: couresty of Life; photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

It baffles my mind everytime I think about how small and insignificant my life is in the great span of things. Yet still, in my lifetime, so much is going to happen. I also am always fascinated by what Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be." This is so true, and although I enjoy those days where I sit around the living room reading and sipping tea and occaisonaly staring out the window to remind me that the world still goes on, quickly, as I sit there doing nothing, I have come to realize that my best days, when I feel most productive at the end of the day, are the days that I interact, communicate, and conversate with the most people.

At the end of my schooling, I gurantee you that it will not by the grade on my first statistics test of the semester or the week or so of very little sleep I got that I will remember. It is going to be the people I meet, the laughs I share, the hugs (and maybe if I'm lucky, even the kisses) that I give that will remain etched and engraved in my memory for years to come.

Going back to Steinbeck's qoute above, I think that it is beautifully constructed, but I also believe that it is because of others, because of man's intimate and emotional relations with other humans, that enable man to be all he can be. Yes, at times we are all going to fall and stumble, but when we have people around us to encourage us and to pick us back up when we fall, it makes the fall much shorter and the stumbling even humurous. It is our friends and families and loved ones that cause us to only take half a step back instead of a full one, because they are there right there with us, stepping side by side, and catching us if we begin to sway.