What are you doing for the rest of your life?

Though it may not amount to commotion, I yearn for a particle of motion in my daily life. Call it the existential vein in me. I’m uncertain whether the enterprise is of any value to me or anyone else. But unquestionablly it alleviates scrutiny arising from indolence. I find there is a need to accomplish something of moderate distinction and activity every day of my life.  Of course my pedantry is never of weighty consequence.  It may be no more than a tricycle ride or a visit with a friend. There are by contrast those among us who preoccupy themselves with far more elegant or exotic endeavours (matters which I find are often the preserve of athletic people in particular, like hiking or climbing mountains or going to jungles). For some people the plan is to visit every place on the globe. Others prefer bird watching in remote islands off the coast of South America.  Some even distinguish themselves by ballooning or jumping out of airplanes.

The steadfastness to do something, anything, is not simply recovery from retirement. Unlike some whom I’ve met, I have not endured any inclination to sustain my professional life. From the moment I locked the door of my office at 77 Little Bridge Street for the last time I have never looked back. Not because I didn’t enjoy my work but because I like to move on following a moment of decision. At the same time I imagine the advantages to be derived from that decision.

It is no doubt this tit for tat design of mine which promotes the succeeding agenda for accomplishment of some order. It is however one of the sad consequences of prolonged sobriety that one is no longer capable of conveniently diverting oneself with a bit of alcoholic abuse and all that that entails. Things such as extended sociability and related absorption and abstraction in lounging, food, dinnerware and musical instruments (in my case the piano). Maybe even cigars.

As a result I have inadvertently confined myself to a realm of manageable purity (such as exercise or reading) or a commitment to interminable travel or extended vacation both of which are expensive and strangely of diminished value by virtue of their rumoured merit; namely, a holiday becomes just a place to live and you blend in with the wallpaper. And the car wash.

It is I find this threat of repetitive infertility that contaminates a normal day.  The challenge is to devise a suitable ambition addressing the domestic overlay without having to alter the entire undercarriage. Herein abides the prerequisite element of creativity, the ability to conceive a workable diversion that meets a standard of extension and performance. What I have lately discovered of this dilemma is that the resources of application and profit are increasingly within my immediate orbit.  It is perhaps the final concession, the surrender to stop running from an imaginary problem. Though I regularly distract myself by recollecting colourful images from my past – moments on an empty beach, a particular hotel room, a social outing to a restaurant or a drive through a picturesque mountain range – those faint but meaningful images soon dissolve as I reconsider the currency of life. This is not to discredit the past nor falsely enlarge the present. But the unqualified truth is that one’s entertainment going forward must survive within its immediate vacuum. How each us resolves that so-called issue (if indeed it rises to that character) is obviously for us to decide; but it is certain that the refreshment will not come from the past.  There’s only one way to go. It’s not mix and repeat.