As Human Beings, Don't We

Despite Our Strongly Felt Kinship And Oneness With Nature, All The Evidence Suggests That Nature Doesn't Care One Whit About Us. Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Floods, Earthquakes And Volcanic Eruptions Happen Without The Slightest Consideration For Human Inhabitants.

Most People Have Learned To Live In The Moment. The Argument Goes That If The Past Has Uncertain Effect On The Present, There Is No Need To Dwell On The Past. And If The Present Has Little Effect On The Future, Present Actions Need Not Be Weighed For Their Consequence. Rather, Each Act Is An Island In Time, To Be Judged On Its Own. ... It Is A World Of Impulse. It Is A World Of Sincerity. It Is A World In Which Every Word Spoken Speaks Just To That Moment, Every Glance Given Has Only One Meaning.

We've Lost Our Way, We Have Lost Our Centeredness. We Don't Have The Time, Literally, To Think During The Day. To Listen To Ourselves Think. To Think About Where We Are Going, Who We Are, What's Important. I Would Bet Most People Don't Have Thirty Minutes In A Day Where They Can Just Sit Down And Think. Or Maybe They Don't Have To Be Sitting, They Can Be Walking.

That's The Fine Balance Of A Fiction Writer...to Be Able To Give Your Characters Enough Freedom To Surprise You And Yet Still Maintain Some Kind Of Artistic Control.

Writers Read Essays And Serious Thinkers And Serious Readers... That Is A Small Population.