Two Milestones

....and both were momentous occasions for different reasons. First, Kenny graduated from Warren high school on June 7th, and around the same time the 17 year cicadas emerged from the ground to begin their adult phase. Kenny was born the year before this brood of insects was hatched, but when one considers the immensely varied life he has led in those 18 years versus the life underground sucking on tree roots that the cicadas have led, one can appreciate the vast differences between our species. The biological clock that allowed the insects to emerge together is still a mystery, while Kenny, like his classmates, has followed a culturally programed clock all his life and only now has obtained the legal adulthood to decide what he wants to do with his future -which is to play music. The cicadas? They will follow their instincts to mate and then die, and their children will burrow underground to begin the cycle all over again. Whether Kenny will eventually marry and have children who repeat his cultural cycle is a measure of his free will, which no doubt is what truly separates us for the insects.