Having nothing to do for the rest of my life is not what I consider a fault or failing. I’ve never been one to sanction shiftlessness. The current feature is not a lack of ambition. Quite the opposite in fact. After a lifetime spent addressing imperatives and needs and obligations of one sort or another – often resulting in late nights at my desk or very early mornings at another or weekends devoted to this and that – I now unexpectedly have the undisputed privilege of doing whatever I want. There are many people who are in the same enviable condition. But frankly I am uncertain how receptive some of them are to the affliction. There are those who require a project, a goal; or perhaps they account their own personal ambitions inadequate. Further it is conceivable that some people are simply unhappy. If one is overcome by depression I suspect it is irrelevant what if anything there is to do.
This may be closer to the point. Though I gabble on about these pseudo-philosophic analyses, the broader culmination is that I am grateful. And I am content. I know how tarsome it is to hear Sally Anne going on and on about the wonder of life; yet I have to ask myself whether there isn’t some value in croaking about the good times. It certainly wasn’t a preoccupation all my life. The notable difference from then and now is that whatever it is I do for the rest of my life hasn’t any value to anyone other than me. This perverse lack of accommodation is for me an unequivocal sacrament. And it is not one I am about to change. The pursuit of charitable contributions I now limit to financial only. I have no further interest in the expiation of my soul.
Today I expressed this fomenting gush for life first by getting the car washed. There! You see! Just as I said, it’s indicative of utter tripe and triviality! Anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with having a clean car. In my defence – and I am not disputing the obsession or the triviality – a clean car is but a spin off to the greater thrill I derive from driving a fine automobile. And while we’re on the subject of defences, the underlying stimulus for today’s car wash was to exercise for the first time my new sticker which the Car Wash Lady stuck to the inside of my windshield yesterday after I paid for the 3-month service. I wanted to see if it worked, whether the gate at the car wash would arise upon my entry. And it did! I haven’t figured out how to order other services (such as interior cleaning) prior to my entry but today I didn’t want to waste time fussing when the gate suddenly rose.
Upon the fulfillment of this footling odyssey I returned to the condo and completed the second round of my breakfast; namely, steel cut oats with precisely five dried prunes. At this juncture it warrants observation that my putative limitless sense of purpose in life does not include bagels or Naan bread with gobs of Pure Irish butter (Yellow Shea) made from grass-fed cows. The predominant lack of imperative doesn’t translate to unguarded indulgence or supervening immoderation. I can only speculate that my bit of subsequent cycling mollified my lesser enterprises at the trough. Tonight – after some 15kms around the Island – it will be more of the usual rabbit food.
When exactly it is that one disembarks from this life we do not know. All the packing and dissembling are for naught. But it willl assuredly transpire! As much as I have considered the utility of drowning in a martini as a last minute device to avoid the inevitable, on balance it is better that I do not. The incrementally minute details of life are not to overlooked by a saturated perspective. The inconsequential developments of today for example were bound by persistence and design. But no one of us controls the tides, the ebbs and flows of the waves. While I have the advantage of collapsing upon the beach, staring into the western horizon and the setting sun, making the utmost of my current situation among the driftwood and the incalculable grains of fine sand, I shall reckon I am satisfied to have nothing to do for the rest of my life!
