After the Ball

Remember when you were a child and had a particularly good birthday party, or a holiday, or a school camp, or a game of football, or your first prom, or a first kiss, and you wanted that moment to last forever? But it never does, does it? The last guest leaves the party, you have had one last ice cream at the beach, gone for one last hike, the final whistle has blown, the band is packing up, you have said goodbye to your first girl friend. It all ends, doesn't it, eventually, and all you have are the memories, growing both fainter, and richer, over time.

Now the whole world is hoping that good times will never end, but knows that they are about to. The whole world shares memories of a time when polar bears roamed the ice, of a time when complex forests covered the Amazon, a time when Kansas had rich farming land, a time when great rivers flowed to seas full of fish and magical coral reefs, a time when the rains came in season, and summers were warm but not hot killers, when winters were cold enough for snow and ice on ponds, when apples grew and daffodils. A magical world of regular seasons, of tens of thousands of fellow species adapted to the conditions on each continent, a world where people had learned to predict the seasons and to farm accordingly.

We all thought, and hoped, that world would never end, that the good times would go on forever. But here we are, on the very last day of the holidays, holding on wistfully to just the fingers of the girl as she pulls away. In the ballroom the cleaners have come in to start stacking chairs and sweeping up the paper cups and streamers. In the real world the icebergs are crashing into the seas, the Amazon forest is being felled and burnt, the hot weather is killing people, the dust storms are beginning, the coral is dying. And still we sit, chaos all around us, trying to make the good moments last.

'After the ball is over, after the break of morn, After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone, Many a heart is aching ..... Many the hopes that have vanished, after the Ball'.

What will you remember most about our world that was?