Just finished an essay in a book, Basic Writings by Martin Heidegger.  Reading Heidegger is like jumping into the deep end of the pool, before one is confident that one knows how to swim.  I read, “What is Metaphysics?” at the behest of a friend

who said that his life was changed by the essay.  Fair enough.  I am always in support of reading, and of doing things that have potential to change one’s life.

The essay was worth the effort.  Coincidentally the content was congruent with the purpose of my

presence in my hometown here in North Carolina.  I came to visit with my sister who is living in an assisted living facility.  Linda has been disabled by mental illness for all of her adult life.  I stay in touch the best that I can.  I was dismayed by the degree of aging that is apparent in her face, in her demeanor, since I was with her nine months ago.  She appears to have aged ten years in a few months.  We felt sadness together as we mentioned in our

conversation that time has not spared either of us.  She misses our parents who have passed on.

I also was able to take a walk along the Eno River which is not far from the neighborhood where I grew up.  As a teenager I remember shooting at snakes in the river.  The area is now a State park, West Point on the Eno.  There is a restored Gristmill on the spot where in the 1700s people settled. This was the beginning of the town of Durham.  The old Mill ceased operation in 1942.

The river is an artery, part of Natures circulatory system.  The rocks scoured bare along the banks, are the bones of the earth, exposed.

On my short hike along the river bank I viewed the aftermath of the flooding that took place when Hurricane Florence.  Normally the Eno river appears to be about 50 yards wide as it flows into the mighty Cape Fear, and then to the Atlantic ocean.  The flooding from Hurricane Florence has transformed the play area in the park, and left behind gullies two to three feet deep.  The restored Grist Mill is closed, the mill race empty of water.  Time means change, the passing away of elements of this river that I had

regarded as unchanging, permanent fixtures that seemed eternal beyond change.

Alas, nothing is exempt from the erosion of time.  I felt moved, and prompted to ask quietly within myself, “Why?’  Why am I here, and why is anything here?

Only when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it does it arouse and evoke wonder.  Only on the ground of wonder–the revelation of the nothing–does the “why?” loom before us. Only because the “why” is possible as such can we in a definite way inquire into ground, and ground them.  Only because we can inquire and ground is the destiny of our existence placed in the hands of the researcher.

–Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings