I spend about ten hours a day (actually, every night) on a dialysis machine as I have end-stage renal disease and my kidneys do little more than take up space across my lower back. When I turn the machine on, it takes about seven seconds to display its welcome screen: "Hello, William Kenny."
I always pause at that screen, pondering how many other people before me it has said hello to (and how many after me it will greet). I don't wonder about what happened to them; I already know. I lie to myself and imagine they went out for a coffee and just never came back.
Every year, for many years, usually starting in late July, my brother, Adam, offers a daily profile on one of the thousands who lost their lives on 9/11. The research is meticulous, and the writing is achingly beautiful. This is from this year's entry on the day of darkness itself.
So many people in the same device, and yet we, in all likelihood, didn't know one another. We are here for a moment, and then the moment is gone, never to be duplicated or repeated. Now multiply that by one hundred billion, which is a guesstimate of how many humans have existed so far, here on the Big Blue Marble.
And each story is different, as you'll see when you click any human ever and go on your own journey. If each life is a story, turning the page can be the most courageous act any of us ever do.
Fair winds and following seas.
-bill kenny
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