It’s cold and windy and the sky can’t seem to make up its
mind whether it’s going to snow or just spit rain and barf hail. I must say, a windowed office, although
conceptually luxurious, makes one far more susceptible to seasonal mood
swings. I find myself feeling akin to a
six year old at the ballpark with Dad after another lose to add to the six-game
streak—constantly rooting for the sun that never seems to champion. Alas, that’s winter.
While trying to drum up a positive thought to write about, I
found myself staring out the window, watching this piece of paper caught in the
wind. Even though it’s been weighted
with pellets of sleet and drops of rain, it continued to twist and swirl in a
tornado-esque dance until a car drove past and it skipped out of sight.
Perhaps I’m reaching here, but it made me think about the
transitory nature of paper in general. It’s always coming and going, pausing perchance for days on the desk of
a vacationer, then circling around the office, and likely back where it started
from. Where does it go once all the
check marks and all of the signatures and stamps have been affixed and all of
the perforated pieces torn and mailed…what’s left of that paper and where does
it go?
Similarly to our friend the wind dancer, it drifts somewhere
where it can be forgotten. Out of sight,
out of mind. You know where it is, for
the most part. It’s not lonely, because
it’s kept company with thousands of other pieces of forgotten paper, taking up
space and costing you money.
Just for a minute, imagine if all of those pieces of paper
were gone…stored securely and paperlessly and accessible at the click of a
button or two, from anywhere, any time. What if our world was less littered with forgotten and tossed aside
pieces of information…what if everything was a little more precious and a little
more well regarded.
That’s a world that I would love to look out the window at.