To be or not to be
You know you’re getting older when your youngest grandchild goes off to college. When getting out of a car takes longer than it used to. When you sometimes have to ask for people to repeat themselves.
But you know things are still generally all right when you read a wondrous book like “A River Runs Through It” and revel in the wording that flows as smoothly as the rippling water described therein. When you see a shooting star in the nighttime sky. When you hold someone you love in your arms. When you bite into a juicy peach. When you spend time with friends who go back fifty years. When you read a well-written opinion piece on almost any topic. Being together with family.
There are also multiple far-off memories to hold and to treasure. Parents and grandparents along with aunts and uncles who used to be at table but are now long gone. The first girl you kissed when you were only five years old. Music from the 60s and 70s. Paddling on a five-day wilderness canoe trip while at YMCA camp.
Also all those teachers and others who taught you how to build the basic platform of what you know. Plus special individuals who showed you what really matters: how to live a life.
A few things bug me like those individuals who complain about a few days of cold weather in the summer but then when it turns hot the next week they complain about that, too. I’d list more such cases but there aren’t many irritants that really rise to the occasion.
That’s because most former exasperations don’t bug me like they once did. Noisy music on the subway. A book that’s a bust. A restaurant meal that’s less tasty than what it should have been. I came to realize that when I worried about such things in the past, fretting didn’t change anything.
Some of that new understanding has arisen from discovering stoicism. Stoicism has its roots in ancient Rome and Greece but I just recently learned about it. Stoicism can be defined by saying it doesn’t matter what happens, what matters is how you deal with it. Who knows what else is out there to learn? As long as I’m still looking for revelations, large and small, life will continue to be worth living. Praise be.
I really enjoyed your most recent column because it took me back to the early 60s when our lives briefly intersected. I must admit too that I first enjoyed your columns in high school when you were writing weekly for the Guelph Mercury about life at John F Ross being an interested observer from GCVI.
But a friendship created in a church youth group where the church provided the locale allowed teens from both sides of the river to socialize formally and informally. So we ended up taking up the collection together which was a great way to get a look around for any attractive women as the plate was passed down and back around and the opportunity to skip the sermon and go outside for a cigarette or two.
Dick Thomson, was that one of your father Forbes’ sermons that you skipped? Carla has told many tales of the good times at St. Andrews.