Hubert ~
In your peculiarly inimitable manner you have illuminated for us a charming topic of irresistable dimension: the concept of life's 'ultimate defining moment.'
Well proffered. I assume you are discounting those fortuitous events such as the falling piano which severs your brain stem as you pass beneath, or which narrowly misses your hide as the forte is reduced to oriented strand board against the sidewalk.
The defining moment which intrigues you is the type constructed by a person's own free will- as much a goal as a challenge, like your easy-riding the Alcan Highway. Nice achievable possibility.
Exploring the topic could consume its own dedicated thread, but a few questions come to mind for your attention.
*Why would some folks create a defining moment so remotely attainable as to become a fantasy? Such as Strom Thurmond doing Dallas or Hillary elected to the Papal College?
*How can some people even contemplate what a defining moment is when they've spent their entire life within fifty miles of their home, and have no desire to explore?
*What is left in life anyhow after you have accomplished your defining moment? Does the light bulb come on? Or does it sputter slowly out, burning your skin with sizzling pieces of disintegrating
carbide?
*If your spirit remains functioning after life's ultimate defining moment, then perhaps the choice was neither defining nor ultimate?
I like your Alcan moment simply because it is achievable, whether you pilot the hog yourself or are merely towed behind, lashed onto one of those ridiculous two-wheeled trailers you see behind cycles on the freeway occasionally. (A rolling iron-lung would seem most appropriate for YOU, Hubert. Think of all the space available for well-wishers to autograph when you pulled up to have your overhead mirror Windex'ed?)
*How many ultimate defining moments can a life support? Or does it take to support a life? I've achieved several; most aviation related. Twenty years ago I slow-rolled a huge Lockheed 18 ex-Navy warplane loooow over Main Street of a (nameless) Fla. town, reincarnating perhaps, for a moment of suspended animation, Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim from 'Slaughterhouse Five,' and avoided the humorless pursuing gestapo. The sound of 44 individual Pratt & Whitney cylinders slooooowly re-igniting after the shock of fuel starvation was in purest mathamatical relation to decreasing airspeed and increasing proximity to the ground. Lesson/Loophole to be learned: If pilot has no license, then FAA can't take it away! Certainly defining, but hardly ultimate if I can personally relate it this lovely thanksgiving day.
Prof. Few, these are questions that could *only* be skillfully addressed by the rapidly defining discipline of Quantum Psychology, which I see becoming the "est" of the next millenium.
You will be pleased to know that I have already filed a brief in my ongoing 'habeus corpus' custody battle, demanding an immediate answer to *why* no quantum psychologist has yet been ordered by the Court to examine the merits of my case as they have unfolded.
Regards,
Rick
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