D.I.T.W.

Funny what you remember and what you forget. I remember sitting in the teacher’s reserved seats as the Mendon class of ’79 did their walk across the stage. The last act on the program was a slide show. It was the first time I’d seen a slide show at graduation, projected on the wall, to music. It began with photos of the graduates when they were toddlers, through elementary and middle school. There were candid shots, sports photos, band photos and finally their Sr. trip shots; it went on for twenty minutes. The music was timely, popular songs; the one I remember from that show was Kansas’ ‘Dust In The Wind.’ The song doesn’t get much air play 37 years later but whenever it does come up it takes me straight to that commencement day in May of 1979. 

At the time I knew the song and liked it; only knew sound bites of the lyrics but it was one of those songs that moves at a different level. You get a profound message, you feel it more than comprehend the words. The hippies and the rebels, the geeks and the button down collar heroes were all in sync, mezmorized as if they were all wired into the same nerve. Over time, it was the lyrics that caught up with me. They put the feeling into context. Without music it’s a poem so you feel less and ponder more. 

King Solomon, the wise; he got it right. Even kings die and someone inherits their riches, maybe a fool, maybe even an enemy. So he advised that we should live a good life, take pleasure in everything we do because it only lasts a little while. Self righteous zealots dismiss him as a Hedonist but I think his wisdom supersedes their zeal. We are small, a pin point of light, then gone in a heart beat. But we are here and we have this moment. ’Kansas’ put it to music. “. . . just a drop of water in an endless sea. Then we learn in the next verse, “All we do; crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see:    . . . nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. . .” and even a king can’t buy another minute.  All we are is dust in the wind. Big-B Believers take that for a metaphor while little-b folks understand the Solomon reality. We really are star dust constructs with a half life of nanoseconds: now there's the metaphor. “. . . close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment’s gone.” That’s what those graduating seniors sensed. It was their time, with no time to waste. I can’t speak for them now but I’m a believer: All we are is dust in the wind.