On Intentional and Unintentional Cessation

 One day, as the InterWeb meme goes,  you and your friends went outside to play for the last time without realizing it.

I cannot specifically remember the date, but I can remember the time:  the summer between my 8th grade and Freshman year.  My best friend, who lived literally 300 feet away, had a five lot in back of his house, a hilly sort of thing with brush and trees, overgrown, with a drainage ditch running through part of it.  It was perfect for two boys with imaginations and time.  For several years we would tear through the brush, make war on each other, "practice" tracking, make trails and forts and plans.

Two things happened at that point: high school, which for me ended up meaning band and drama and schoolwork and for him meant soccer and schoolwork, and games, video and roleplaying.  Suddenly time spent outside was replaced (when we could cobble it together) playing Atari or Dungeons and Dragons.  We occasionally still went outside, but it was never the same.

It makes me realize that in life, the number of things we unconsciously never do again greatly outweighs the ones we consciously end.

The conscious endings are often understandable: the coworkers we will likely never see as we move across the country, the sport we "retire" from because we become too old or too broken.  In some cases it is the passing of the torch:  the matron who surrenders her holiday meal preparation to the younger generation or the patron who gives his prized possession - a gun, a knife, a vehicle, a lease on a cabin or fishing right - to the next generation.  

The unconscious endings are the sadder part by far.

The unconscious endings are the ones we never see coming.  They are things that perhaps we intended to do someday again - things that we perhaps loved - but somehow the circumstances never present themselves to do them again.  It is the musician who never plays, the athlete who no longer participates, the friend or family we have not seen for years.  We never really intended to stop doing these things, yet somehow we continue to keep not doing them.

Sometimes, of course, it simply is time:  I cannot go back and somehow pretend I have the interest or stamina to do some of these things.  Sometimes it is interest, which is harder because I think if asked most people would not say "Well, I have completely given up on that".  There is something about us that does not like the words of concept of "giving up".  Things leave us; we do not leave things.

What it should do - what it very occasionally does for me if I am paying attention - is make me more conscious of those activities that I am in and doing.  It is hard to think about doing something for the last time except when you think that it might be the last time that you do it.  Constantly bearing this in mind can give a piquancy to the activity, a certain flavor and bite, that just doing it the way you have always done will not.  

If you think it might be the last time, you will spend more time trying to enjoy it.

A few years ago, on a whim, I drove by the old property to see it.  There is at least one additional house there but most of the brush and trees are present and from the road I could still see the trench where we looked out over the invading hordes.

If there ghosts from times past running in the forest, they ran in the woods far away from the road beyond my ability to see.