This is Milos Karadaglic, playing my favorite Doris Day's "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." Do me a favor - if you're planning to read the text below, click "play" on the video first.
* * *
From
my office you can see a boat in the sky and every time it catches my sight, I
think of Noah. Of his dream and legend, and why the idea of placing an object
so out of its depth in midst of vacant air is so enthralling. It is the
unexpected that captures our attention, the abnormal. We see beauty in the
strange, the alien. We hail the people who create these strange, wondrous
things. But not always.
When
Noah was tasked to build the Ark,
I imagine he wasn't very popular. People would've called him insane. Got few
loose screws in his head, probably could benefit from some knocks. Oh Noah,
he's a loony man.
Had
he ever felt despair when the ridicules got too much? When the barbs stung a
little too close to heart, had he ever wanted to join others in the mocking? Had
he ever hated himself?
Perhaps,
perhaps, perhaps.
According
to the story, however, the Ark
got built anyway.
I
wonder if Noah had ever seen this coming—his story surviving the thick coils of
time—and what he might've said if he could see us now, trying to do what he'd
done so many ages ago.
Nowadays
the sky looks ready to release another biblical flood and even though I do not
put much stock in the doomsday predictions (plural, of course, because we, as a
species, have a universal fascination with death whether we want to admit it or
not), I keep waiting for the crack in the clouds that will bring rain of
lightning and hails. It crosses my mind now and then that the world may really
end on a Friday, which is just two days away, but then the thought simply
excuses itself and slinks back to the corner.
Some
people say that humans are born alone and will die alone, so even when all
perish two days from now, each life still leaves this world as alone as they
were when they entered it. But alone doesn't mean lonely. Alone doesn't mean
hopeless. Even at the end of everything, there can still be hope and
companionship.
Allow
me to recall the thought that has been festering at the corner. I'd like to
call this nearest doomsday prediction the Unexpected Expected. It's expected
because people were told beforehand that it's coming (although no one's
vouching for the source's credibility), but at the same time it's also
unexpected because people think it's an almost certainty that it won't happen since
experts all around the world have managed to drag the hype down to the level of
superstitious murmurs.
If
the Unexpected Expected does occur this Friday, we are faced with a huge abnormality
and like most I suspect, we won't be ready for it. We had our chances to become
Noah, but we didn't take it.
Reading
this, you may think to yourself, "Pfft, it ain't gonna happen. The world's
not going to end on Friday."
Well.
Perhaps,
perhaps, perhaps.
