The Old Man and The Man in The Moon

As one man to another....

The Old Man looked up at The Moon that night and stared at it. It was a good moon, a fine display of The Creator’s Handiwork. But it was only half there. The other half was hiding and The Old Man moved a bit to see if he could see the other half, but he couldn’t. He did see a shadow of the other half but just a shadow.

 There were nights in the not too distant past that The Old Man could see the proverbial Man in the Moon. He thought it was worthless to see this mythical person but not be able to have a meaningful conversation with him.

Even though The Moon couldn’t talk back, The Old Man continued to talk to The Man in the Moon as if he were real. After all, The Man in the Moon couldn’t talk back or disagree or contradict anything The Old Man said, so he had that in his favor.

On the other hand, The Old Man couldn’t go out for coffee with The Man in the Moon either. He couldn’t talk about old times together, and he certainly couldn’t talk shop because they had little in common.

Or did they?

So as The Old Man stared into the moonlit sky, he pondered the mysteries of the sky, the moon, stars, other planets, solar systems, galaxies, black holes, comets, meteors, nebulae, star bursts, and creation itself, even as manmade satellites floated overhead.

No, The Old Man could only marvel at The Man in the Moon’s majestic view night after night. The Old Man could do the same from where he stood but it wasn’t the same. He could even record it with sophisticated looking and recording devices if he knew how to do any of those.

But The Old Man just gazed at the open sky as he had been doing for 80 years. The sky and all its splendor wasn’t going away even if he stayed on the planet 80,000 more years. The Man in the Moon would continue to speak to The Old Man as one old man to another. The words wouldn’t be audible but the message would be just as profound: stay the course. You’ve come this far. Teach what you know and pray others will hear.

The Old Man gave The Man in the Moon a thumbs up before heading in to bed. He even said, “See you tomorrow night. Same time.”

Just as he turned the door knob to go inside, he turned back to The Man in the Moon and wondered, “Where does he sleep at night?”