I am struggling with energy after a full work week. This has gotten ordinary for me. I understand why some guys my age retire, and I have only two months before my "legal" retirement age of 66. I have physical conditions. I have a large pharmacy in my home meaning a good many foreign chemicals in my body to control blood pressure, cholesterol, blood clots, diabetic issues, water retention and prostate issues. That pharma has to affect me. Furthermore, I have absolutely nothing to prove out there on the planet any more. By the end of any work day I am fairly spent. By weeks end I am more than that and feel rather desperate. I am not looking for sympathy. I have absolutely "earned" every bit of this, including the fact that I cannot financially seriously consider retirement. Whatever. My condition is still basically middle class, though at the low end of it and not even that if I was trying to support more than myself. That is not true for so many. There is no question that the middle class is disappearing as the world returns to the way things always have been. It is not natural for people who have much to think even a little about the great majority of people who have little. This is not even reprehensible it is so natural, but it is a matter for great grief. If we actually try to force the issue as the idealist communists did, we only succeed in creating great institutional evil. Coercion of any sort in any situation almost never works permanently.
The Alternative
Solitude's magic
is my delight - far from drab
days spent as I must
at corporate desks
beneath the florescent glare
of ordinary
tasks for gray old pay.
In solitude's song I fly,
gone to other worlds.
December 19, 2009 11:02 PM
He ment well, you wrote, "Although I agree with you on princaple, sometimes the ends justify the means. looking back I ask myself was that a hill worth making my final stand on? Would I be willing to pay the price knowing now what that price was? The answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes! The bill for that stand is still being paid. I was not willing for that life to end on my watch, and no one gave me any other stomichable options that would leave my soul relativly intact."
ReplyDeleteTo which I reply, "Exactly!" What I was trying to say imperfectly, there is no principle that works in all situations on our imperfect planet. I said one time at least of my own situation in the nineties that "she would not die on my watch if I could help it." This even though any intervention at this level would raise deep resentment. At that point it is not about them but about us, not really done for them but for us. To say any other thing is to be a fool.
And the principle is soul salvation, not some standard of behavior per se.
Oh yes, and the price was exacted all the way as you know, because when she left my watch she died anyway.
ReplyDeleteYour calm and compassionate detachment about something that's costing you so dear is remarkable. As is that you keep on here so faithfully. I just hope it helps.
ReplyDeleteSorry it's so hard, wish it could be otherwise.
Lucy, this blogging is "publishing" as far as I am concerned, just as it is noted in most venues I know of. If it is published here, then they would rather not receive it and will not publish the same work there.
ReplyDeleteI think I am getting a decent readership over time, averaging these days around 150 hits a day. The views a book gets in the store is no more than this I would think. I am obviously not trying for sales.
I get this without the hassle of dealing with publishers.
And to "He ment well" to be crystal clear, the morphing of some broader principle into one of "soul salvation" means the saving of my own soul, not yours, even if it is as in the case under discussion your life I save using some kind of coercion. At that point I just don't give a shit what you think of me at the fundamental level or how it comes out later between us. There is always a point like that possible, I think, in many principled situations. That is fundamental to AA and Alanon solutions within alcoholic situations.
ReplyDelete