WHAT IT'S ABOUT

If I wanted to write the story of my life (which I don’t), the strange fact is that it wouldn’t be about me. It wouldn’t be about some separate person named Hamilton who has been at the center of countless separate, personal experiences, as though I am the main character in a decades-long drama about myself. Life isn’t like that – isn’t separate and disconnected and personal. Life – anyone’s life – is a measureless sea, of which the “person” is simply one of countless essential but infinitesimal currents. My life story would not be about a separate “me”, but about the endless sea of life that  swirled and flowed in the years from 1941 to whenever I die. I am simply an ever-rolling ripple in this sea, and my story, like anyone's, would be the story of the whole and never-ending sea itself. If someone asked me what my life is about, I would say it’s not about me, but about all the mornings and midnights from 1941, and about all the winds and seasons, and all the friends and families, and the trees and blossoms, and the spinning earth and all the stars and planets and the old, astonishing universe. That’s what it’s about.