The next three days are forecast to be snowy. To dub the winter weather a storm is overzealous; but because this is a weekend preceding Christmas it is reasonably predicted there will be uncommon activity stirring about the community. It is too to be expected that tempers will rise, people will be in a rush, the aisles of the grocery stores and the fuel stations will be pressing. The weather (even if hospitable) will involve winter grime underfoot; and, it will be all one can do to escape the kerfuffle and to get back home and sit by the fire.

As evidence of my prediction, the traffic today was greater than normal.  For reasons I have never understood there appears to be a crescendo of movement on a Friday afternoon – when as usual the sun is glaring directly into one’s eyes during these late afternoon manoeuvres.

But as one correspondent joyfully opined this morning while I tricycled about the subterranean basement, “It’s cold outside! But it is healthier.” Whether this is just a Canadian illusion I do not know, yet incomprehensibly the motto seems to work. Unquestionably one feels more braced in the cooler weather. I wouldn’t however go so far to say it is my favourite time of year. When driving for example I like to have the windows open. But it is a deprivation which for the moment I can endure. Having returned home and regained my leisurely lookout upon the iced river pathway, consoled as always by my afternoon indulgences of sliced green apple and a double espresso, I rejoice in the privilege of old age and cultivated indolence.

The cultivation is most certainly not the quality of my particular endeavours; rather it is the confession of Nature’s unfathomable rewards.  Clearly there is a price to be paid for the bounty – and that of course is old age – but I am finding it comes with so many fitting tributaries of unanticipated benefit. Among these perks is the act of reduction.  Everything is less.  Distillation is a rite of immeasurable and often paradoxical ascendency. Only last evening for example I was recalling my former days of private property management.  It was an inestimable task and one from which I willingly depart. Instead we now gleefully delight in the absence of proprietorship and the advantage of tenancy. In the process all else to varying degrees has been diminished; viz., possessions, family, friends and acquaintances, mobility, health, appetite, you name it. I have opted to praise the decline as accommodation. Never do I recall having been so providentially treated as now.  Even though my memory has declined, I have now so little of necessity to remember.  Even though my mobility is constrained, I haven’t anywhere incommodious to attend. Though my social calendar is remarkably clear, I content myself with casual conversation. These are indeed halcyon days!

And notwithstanding the penalty for the merit, I attach as always to the adage contained in the ritual of Freemasonry that, “Nature teaches us how to die.” The explosion of old age like the sequels of blossom and fail are incontestable. Having the mundane fortuity of Bose® headphones, listening to my favourite classical music, revelling to the mystery of the winter atmosphere, reflecting idly upon the past, counting the charity of both ups and downs, captivating long lost amusements from the bottom drawer of my imagination, the list continues to unfold (and no doubt to diminish) with each passing day. Meanwhile Voltaire’s parody in Candide of “the best of all possible worlds” (the celebrated view of Leibniz) sustains its marvels.

The phrase “the best of all possible worlds” (French: Le meilleur des mondes possibles; German: Die beste aller möglichen Welten) was coined by the German polymath and Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil), more commonly known simply as the Theodicy. The claim that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds is the central argument in Leibniz’s theodicy, or his attempt to solve the problem of evil.

Luckily for me I haven’t to solve the problem of evil because it doesn’t immediately affect me; though I feel sorry for those who suffer. It is as much for me a philosophical puzzle to address Leibniz as myself on this issue. Sadly it is a universal issue particularly meaningful at this time of year, in the depth of a cold winter, celebrating at once redemption and loss.