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Last week, as I sat in one particular meeting (I sit in many now), I felt my frustration starting to rise.
Part of was simply the proposal itself (something which in theory we as a department have authority over), part of it was whom was suggesting it. But I sat there and slowly stewed on the matter, letting it impact my drive home and watching it follow me into the evening.
Here is the funny thing: Had I died last Thursday night, my last thought would have been on something that literally has no impact on anything but a very narrow set of activities that may last (at the most) three months.
I would like to say that I am better about this than that moment, but if I am honest, I am not. I let people get under my skin. I can easily get annoyed. I will stew on something rather than let it go.
Not remembering that I could die at any minute and that would be the last thought on my mind.
When driving home from Curling practice on Sunday, I was reminded of a quote from Martin Luther that goes something like "We cannot prevent the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from making a nest there" - the idea being that (for Luther) we cannot prevent sin from being around us, but we can work to keep ourselves from falling into those sins. In a like manner, I cannot always prevent the small, the mendacious, the annoying, the mediocre, the slightly frustrating from coming into my life. I can, however, make sure that I do not dwell on such things.
So make sure to get out and see the flowers and sun. Interact with friends. Do the things that bring you joy. Pet a rabbit or a cat. Bring goodness and kindness into the world. Make sure, as the quote suggests, to live. Guard your thoughts so that even if you cannot fully get away from those things that bother you, you can put them in their proper place and leave them where them belong.
After all, in an instant all can all end. And I, at least, should hate my last thought or word to be something that made me angry or cross.
Careful about such thoughts whilst driving home lest you never MAKE it home sir, taking into account OTHER drivers is bad enough, keep your wits about you behind the wheel TB.......:) Curling eh? Good for you.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - It is a good point, although I am grateful that my short 10 minute commute keeps me out of most of the traffic patterns.
DeleteCurling has been a great experience. It is on the list to write about. We start a triples league this week.
Martin Luther has many good quotes. The nest is so true.
DeleteDriving while still fretting over some "problem" is dangerous as Nylon said so well.
Curling, wow a sport my beloved wife finds wildly interesting. One shoe for gliding, the other for tractions and broom like crazy :-)
Michael - greatest danger for me over the years has really been being far sleeper than I should probably be when I'm on the road. Short commute has also helped with that as well.
DeleteCurling Has proven to be a very enjoyable sport. One thing I will note is that for beginners we use a brace for our hand that does not have the stone rather than a broom. With a brace, you can settle all your weight on one side; with the broom, I think you have to be much more centrally balanced, which is a longer-term skill.
Being an old motorcyclist, I can attest that the most dangerous time to drive is during the work commute. People are either thing about getting to work, or getting home- in either case, they are not really driving the car. Cell phones and texting , of course, has made this exponentially worse.
Delete(riding a cycle makes one about 20 times more aware-
or you don't get old.)
The essential question is this.
Why do you (we) work? Is it some expectation that some day in the future we can "retire", and live a life of ease on our accumulated fortune? What if we die the day after?
And looking at the accelerating avalanche of debt, is there any reason the investments we are counting on will even be there? For sure, the debt will be there.
Raven - I can believe that it is the most dangerous time to ride a motorcycle. Yet another reason that, even If I ever wanted to ride, likely I would make it about five minutes.
DeleteWhy do we work? That is a great (and deep) question. Part of it is to survive; in the modern economy we trade our time for money which we use to buy things. Part of it is to save for those days that we may not want to (or be able to) work. Is there any reason to believe the investments will be there? Possibly not. But possibly yes.
The question may be what we transmute that our time/money into: something of value (however one measures that) or something of passing fancy.
I've been guilty of stewing over trivial things too though never really on the drive home. I always lived fairly close to work so like you now, didn't have much time to stew on a drive. I also enjoyed the drive home so much that I was always anticipating what I would be doing shortly. The stewing for me usually came in the evening as I was trying to go to sleep or the following morning knowing what I would face once I got to work.
ReplyDeleteEd - My commute home used to be much longer than it is now so I had plenty of time to think about. And like you, it will also show up at other weird parts of the day, including at night. I think one of my practices this year is to figure out a way to put all that aside when I get home.
DeleteNice sentiment, and a timely post given the amount of noise we endure in everyday life. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI’ve long struggled with the weight of these infractions by the multitude of bad operators and tedious friction of clown worlds manifold absurdities both real and amplified by my own idealistic and rigid perspectives. Failing in both stoicism and Christian grace. Getting a little better I suppose but a long way to go.
Toiling on my little farm, mostly alone, to bring life back to a forgotten fallow patch of dirt that the dominant culture would see as a failure of material trajectory, I often become down on the whole prospect of work and life. And can see why many of my older contemporaries here in nowhere find some contentment in believing the end times are here.
I’ve neither the time or the money at this stage of life to rejoin the trajectory of success that my college friends cling to. Nor the physical ability and capital to make a proper farm in economic terms. But I just keep working. I don’t even know why sometimes. Digging holes. Filling them in. Cursing my artists brain when it comes to cutting compound angles to fix a simple thing. Perpetually disappointed in fellow men who either ignore the war on truth or propagate it for personal gain. It’s easy to let it weigh me down.
I’m neither artist nor carpenter, mechanic nor designer, businessman nor agrarian; just a keeper of a tiny fire in which many irons rest. Cherry red with potential but alas too many to make any one in full.
And so I walk the old farm road every day, often twice, with my dog and sometimes the cat, where I work out such disappointments and dreams together in lockstep. Sometimes it’s all just too beautiful to take. Others dark and moody for my life resembles Sisyphus and his stone.
Early spring was a dark time for me. Just really down. A major farm project fell thru. Another inflated in price beyond reach. I was so tired. Don’t see the point. But then my wife and I passed our neighbors down the way on our walk. A visitor in the drive. Neighbors inside. It was his brother. A gregarious fellow. Quite chatty. So we chewed the fat. But then just like that we hit bone.
He told us his brother having been all jabbed up by force of employment was now rotten full of turbo cancer.
A month prior I had a been in our barn with him and he was fine. Now he has weeks to live. His wife, a late in life reconnection with his high school sweetheart, had just entered his life a year prior. They had just moved here to be closer to his kids.
The blessings had flooded into his life. Retirement. Family. Love. A tidy little house somewhere pretty.
And just the same that flood brought his end on this world to the fore. The debate of knowing your time vs some random instant tragedy rages on.
So we have what we have until we have not. God only knows so best we can do is try to know God.
And in the meantime soak up those small moments and treasure what we have, toil and all; laugh at the absurdities, push the stone back up the hill. Kiss your loves. Breathe in the beauty that is all around us knowing that it is but a sample of the eternal.
I still have dark moments. But the seasons keep coming and so I keep moving. Verdant life pushes up through the red clay. Seems impossible. But there it is. Miracles abound. It is glorious.
Anon - Thank you in turn for a very thought provoking post.
DeleteI often think that many of us (most of us?) lead lives exactly like you suggest: working in our small arenas, battling the forces that are nature and folks that either wish us ill directly or indirectly or simply do not consider as worth considering at all, other than donations to the tax economy or the periodic times when "our voice" needs to be heard. Our victories are often for ourselves alone or maybe a few around us, our losses go unremarked upon except as notes in the ledgers of our minds.
I confess as well that this has not been the Spring I was hoping for either. The sale of my parents' property will finish this week, and with that "The Plan" for what was next goes completely out the window. I feel drained of hope - I should clarify not drained in the sense that the suicidal feel it (I know that feeling as well from years past), but in a sense that I feel like everything I touch falls to ash.
And then, as you write, something happens to us or someone we know, which completely reframes the issue.
As I write this, the top of the tree outside my third story window is bobbing in the wind, covered with the first blush of new leaves, tiny globes of green that tell me no matter how grey the sky is outside right now or the cold mid-April wind that is blowing seems, Spring is still coming. It reminds me both that there is something beyond this greyness I see now - both my personal space and the weather - and that ultimately there is Spring believers will know in which all of these things will have passed away.
Thanks for your honest sharing and for giving me a much-needed perspective.
Yessir parting with the ranch must have been a really difficult transition. I’ve left three of my homes already. My hometown no longer exists in any meaningful way. Most of the western landscape that shaped me is gone one way or another. All of that permanence that seemed to exist for generations also seems to just evaporate in a season or two on our watch. Maybe it’s real maybe it’s just the perspective. I dunno. I long for the tall timbers and expansive river valleys where I first cut my way. But it’s just not really there anymore. So I try, and often fail, to carry those things forward in my own ways in this new land I find myself shaping. I reckon that’s part of what defines our time here and now; both as keepers of what was and pioneers of what might become. I find some optimism in framing the horizon through a sort of lens of this is our frontier to tame, to master. Perhaps each generation has their manifest.
ReplyDeleteYet the old ways are broken, or long forgotten, no longer congruent with the landscape. Not worthless. Just in need of a retooling.
We repurpose and rebuild what we can where we stand.
Many souls before us have met such a challenge and in some aggregate of that a great many things were birthed.
But like you I also suffer a sort of longing - and have lived a ronins way, in this masterless fallen kingdom that has left so many to their own unsettled wandering.
I will leave a better slice of land for the next guy. That’s something. But I can’t totally dispel my greedy desire for something greater to gather up all this potential and point it toward something bigger than the long list of quotidian tasks that soaks my time up with quickening.
We need real community again. Something uncomfortable will likely be necessary to cobble it together out of necessity. Some days I say bring it. Others I think I’m crazy for wishing ill of such an easy time, relatively speaking.
I run my thumb across my callused hands and I know which way is true. But I’m also getting old. Theres a point when you won’t outlive your next dog. The stirring in your gut roots down. So back to work I go. Doing what I can. While I still can. Godspeed.
Anon - In the end, it is both hard and easy. Hard, because of all the history that has been there. Easy, in that over the last year I have had time to prepare myself for it.
DeleteMy hometown still exists, but it has survived by becoming much less of a "town" and much more of a destination; I cannot afford to live there now where people like my parents could afford a very middle class existence. The landscape that I wandered growing up is now built up and fenced in; in some ways reflecting the fact that we have not only kept children inside but driven them in by destroying the habitats where they could roam and grow.
What gives me confidence - even in these times - is that mankind has been here before: out of the ruins of the Roman Empire came Western Europe, for example, and there was a value to those who preserved the old texts and old knowledge and passed them down to the next generation.
And yes, we do need community - not a community solely of electrons on screens and pictures on a page, but actual community, looking to into another's eyes and shaking another's hands. But is something we have to proactively build anymore: the systems that used to enforce such things are thin indeed and without effort, nothing will happen.
And perhaps that is what you are getting at: the fact that anything anymore that is worth preserving is both a proactive effort and one that goes largely unrecognized and unnoticed except by those of similar mindsets.
Godspeed indeed.