The days go by too quickly. I’m not quite sure why it seems like the older one gets the faster the days seem to zing by. Maybe part of it has to do with the constant litany of activity that we all seem to heap onto our busy lives. I don’t think I have a friend or acquaintance that doesn’t feel the need to inform me of how laden they are with activity.
“Oh my God, I’m like sooo busy!”
Am starting to wonder about all this retirement talk I hear from people of late. What is it that we are really looking for? No more nine to five? Laying by the pool, head slightly dizzy from that second gin and tonic … music fades in an out in the background … turning pages in a book we’ve been reading for the last three months. What are we wanting escape from? Our kids, who clamor for our attention and never run out of energy as quickly as they run out of money … a wife who has seen better days and is for all practical purposes just there legally … is it to escape from the burden of financial issues or from aging parents … escape from the dreaded “C” word from the doctor? What is it? What is it that we all really want down in our core being?
If you are tempted to respond with something along the line of St. Augustine who said we are restless until we find our rest in “Thee.” Try again. Well, you can believe that if you’d like. A faith that sees earthly pursuits and joys as frivolous, that sees art appreciation as crying over spilt milk and that promises no earthly contentment is shortsighted. A creed of “trust and obey for there’s no other way” and whose eye is always on that of “heaven” and that lives in a perpetual state of struggling is a faith I am no longer anxious to explore. It has been mined out, If heaven is all we have to look forward to in this life, what a sorry lot we all are.
You can find fault with what I say and can dismiss all of this as the ranting and rave of a lunatic or of an “angry soul” in search of meaning and significance. Don’t give in so easily to these worn slogans. When you are alone and there is no one to impress with the right answer, the right turn of the word and the like, what is it that you ask yourself? What does your heart say to you? How do you respond to its questions? What do you mean in this life?
Some things I would like to experience? I think it would be wonderful to …
