It is remarkable how suddenly one can become swallowed up in things, silly every day things really. Things like X-rays and ultra sound, annual physical exam, eye exam and new glasses, tooth extraction and implant, merchandise deliveries, oil change for the car, cardiac device check, family and friends’ birthdays and gifts, scheduled contract and service renewals, sister’s wedding anniversary, vaccinations, income tax and the recurring expectations that I am certain everyone has. Not to mention in this lingering lock-down the mounting need for a sensible haircut!
Yesterday – while chatting idly with a friend in Vancouver – I missed a call from the hospital to schedule an appointment for me. By the time I reconnected with the hospital it was too late in the afternoon for the receptionist to access the booking office so I am obliged to linger until the start of the week. No big deal but it frustrated me that a casual interruption collided so adventitiously with a matter I consider of superior status. Indeed by the time I retired for the night I had succeeded to toxify this trifling obtrusion to the degree of discontent. It’s an obsession, plain and simple.
After what was for me a predominantly sleepless night – augmented no doubt by my having forgotten last evening to take my prescription drugs before retiring – it was all I could do this morning until the dawn had fully broken to sustain myself from initiating the purgative action of a bicycling jaunt. I lay on my side in the bed, staring at the curtains to detect the evolution of daybreak. I pried back my sleep mask then grabbed my iPhone to scan the weather. There was rain in the forecast but not until 11:00 am. It was then not even six o’clock so there was plenty of time to initiate my absolution.
Not long afterwards – say approaching seven o’clock – things were hardily in gear. The bed was stripped and loaded into the washing machine. We decorated ourselves to combat the brisk morning air which we had briefly entertained by opening the balcony door. Then we launched ourselves into the fresh day! The purge had begun.
Wrestling frustration to the floor is an uncommon though sometimes necessary undertaking. When I pause for a moment to imagine what others have to endure – the urgency of their prescriptions, the imperative of their concerns – it doesn’t dilute my own comparatively brookable issues but it reminds me that la condition humaine is universal and inescapable. Mine is by collation to many preoccupations but a speck of gravel in one’s shoe. For whatever reason I routinely recall the penalty, duty and obligation of parenting. What a manifestly overwhelming endorsement is child-rearing! As a result I frequently liken my selfish limitation to conduct bordering on disgraceful.
I haven’t however abandoned the convenience of my existence. Instead I ordain my commitment to settlement of whatever dust happens to alight upon my parade. This assault was strengthened by an early morning visit to the grocery store to collect our outstanding provisions. I essentially get the same thing every time. Monotony and routine are my middle names! I even withheld collecting mayonnaise for the cold salmon. It’s my rendition of stoicism in the kitchen! Everything plain and simple, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Though with a squeeze of juice from a fresh lemon. And maybe a dollop of Keen’s mustard. And Maldon sea salt flakes.
Steve Jobs epitomizes the transparency of life!
Steven Paul Jobs (/dʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American business magnate, industrial designer, investor, and media proprietor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc.; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company’s board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Jobs was born in San Francisco, California and put up for adoption. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism.
Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. Together the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers.
People like he and John Denver or almost anyone else who is no longer whinnying among us! How indiscriminate is life! Yet who among us truthfully shares the platitude? It is by Nature itself an incalculable confession! Instead we are consumed by only building a bridge to what follows. Making that pathway open and smooth is the intention.
