Time and tide

Panasonic LX1, f4, 1/125 sec, ISO 80, 28mm equivalent (click to enlarge)

How long have these wooden posts been here trying to hold back the inevitable progress of the sea? Presumably there would once have been planks between these upright posts, yet this once sturdy and proud structure has been reduced to a few stubborn, highly worn posts.

So much that we build and strive for in this life ultimately comes to nothing. ‘Time and tide wait for no man.’ I seem so slow to learn the lesson that is repeatedly played out before me; today’s shiny new gadget is tomorrow’s piece of junk! I think of my first computer, An Acorn Electron, which had 32 kilobytes of RAM – (one photo today can be 5 megabytes meaning it would need 150 or so Acorn Electrons’ memory to store it)! Of course it didn’t have a hard drive, programmes were loaded from and stored upon an audio cassette tape that you plugged in and waited many minutes for it to load or download. I am writing this on my Apple imac that has a 360 gigabyte hard drive, 1 gigabyte of ram and more processing power than probably all the Acorn Electrons that were ever made put together. Yet the day will inevitably come when this computer too will be of no more worth than a large paperweight!

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
(Matthew 6:19-21)