Reflections on Life and Faith,
by David Keating

The Milestones We Reach

July 29, 2006

      I am about to attain a milestone, or so they tell me. Milestones used to be real stones. Granite usually. Once upon a time used by the Romans to mark the distance to Rome from wherever. It was such a good idea that we kept it up in one form or another. Highways still often have mile markers. Not granite though; they’re usually little metal strips on steel posts. Somehow they just don’t have the same character.

     I was on a drive in the country the other day and came across an old milestone that someone had restored. They’d even placed a plaque beside it noting when it was originally placed and the locations it pointed to. I couldn’t help but think of the history that had passed by that hunk of rock. Settlers and soldiers, hard bitten farmers on the way to market, young men on the way to court a beau. The road itself, first just a muddy track, then maybe corduroy (an appropriate name for a surface “paved” with logs), later, some gravel added, eventually hardtop or pavement.

     No doubt that milestone has seen a great deal of change over the years.

     Life’s milestones are similar. They too mark our progress toward a destination, and they too bear witness to change. But we also tend to think of milestones in terms of achievement, of having attained memorable things. Finishing school; getting married; getting divorced; having kids; buying a house; embarking on a career.

     Or reaching certain ages. Like eighteen. Or thirty. Or even a half century.

     And as I approach this “milestone”, I am reminded that there are still places on the planet where just living fifty years is an achievement. And where kids younger than my daughter have seen things I hope never to see.

     That roadside milestone has seen changes, and so have I. Some have been good. I’ve raised a family, made friends with some great people. Lived in a country where the government is reasonably stable, and where our sense of justice and compassion has grown more inclusive.

     But sadly, some things have remained stubbornly the same. Most of the world still has too little to eat, unsafe drinking water, no education, inadequate medicine. No assurance that they will even still be alive tomorrow.

     I sometimes wonder if the truck carrying a decent standard of living for everyone is stuck in a pothole somewhere.

     Or perhaps we’re just on the corduroy part of the road. The place where it’s better than the muddy track we’ve waded through before, but we haven’t yet gotten the gravel laid down to smooth it out.

     The interesting thing about human milestones is that they generally don’t tell you much about where you’re going. They just tell you how far you are from the place you left. That milestone I’m about to reach tells me how far I’ve come, but little about how much farther the road stretches ahead.

     So too with society. We have made progress, even if we question it at times. We’ve also run into the ditch more than once. And we’re not really sure how far it is yet to the destination of a peaceful, compassionate world.

     That’s where faith comes in. Even when we can’t see around the next bend in the road, God can. One of my favorite poems, Desiderata, includes this line: “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

     So let’s appreciate the milestones we reach, and throw down a little gravel to smooth the way for the next traveler.

David Keating