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Over the Horizon

Ah!  Civilization is hard gained!  Humanity is an accomplishment.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom I once read for the fascination
of the breadth of his vision--a task not easily accomplished--
said that what was happening to us as a human species, was that
we were looking up at and seeing ourselves come over the horizon. 
Human beings were spreading everywhere, and we looked
like invaders to ourselves. 

Right now, in Uzbekistan, one of those far places the Soviet Union
once held together with sheer muscle-power, there are human beings
killing other human beings because they are not precisely the kind
of human beings we are, or think we are.  Except that they are. 

The most important thing that has happened to me in my lifetime--
now a long one--is that I grew up, as we all do, thinking of myself
as a Something Human Being.  In my case, I was an immigrant
Norwegian Human Being.  My great-grandparents--some of them--
were immigrants.  My grandparents on my mother's side were
Norwegian immigrants.  My father was a Norwegian immigrant. 

I was a Norwegian immigrant's son, grandson, great-grandson,
surrounded by such people.  I ate meat and potatoes and gravy
and fish. 

Now I have a Black daughter, an Asian stepson, some other kids
I am not genetically related to, and a Ford pickup.  I love Mexican food.
In some peculiar ways, the worst part of my heritage is the part
of the family that is hunkered down, looking up at the horizon,
watching the rest of the human race coming toward us, without
our bunads, without our religion, without our skin color, without
the lilt of our language, without anything that identifies them
as one of us except that we are the same human beings. 

I do not know how we can be so stupid, sometimes.
The babies all cry the same way, and imitate our smiles.

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