Tag: secret of life

The Mass of Men

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner ,

Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”

Well, I don’t know.  I’m not sure I’m the quietest (or the loudest) of individuals.  And as for desperation and resignation that seems a bit much.  For most people work can be a rat race but, is what we do just resignation?  I hope not.  Now, sure, we all have to reach that endpoint and when that gets a lot closer, desperation and resignation start to sound more fitting, more apt.  But Thoreau said the mass of men.  Well, most men aren’t about to face death.  We get a decent shot at a pretty decent span; “three score and ten” the Bible says.

And even when the end is in sight isn’t there any consolation in reflecting on the fact that you spent your life doing what you thought was best?  Maybe it’s a matter of temperament.  I guess Thoreau was a product of Yankee New England upbringing.  And those people have always seemed a little cold and humorless for my taste.  Maybe it’s a combination of puritanism and bad weather but they always seemed like they just bit into something that tasted bad (or maybe it was their reaction at seeing me).  Maybe I’m just naturally cheerful.  Call it my Mediterranean predisposition but I just think that every story has a happy ending.  And this even though I look around me in every direction and I see wrack and ruin out to the horizon.  And sure, when it’s time to start hauling away the wreckage I’ll swear and grumble and complain.  But I’ll still look forward to a lunch break and quitting time.  And then there has to be some human joy somewhere in that mess.

I know some people who live the other way.  And they are quite a bit better off than I am.  That grim determination has its advantages.  You can stuff a 401k plan with quite a lot of money if you’re grimly determined.  And maybe they will have an easier time of it at that last stand knowing that everything is paid for.  I guess it’s kind of the Cheops or Ozymandias option.  But it still feels kind of grim to me.

So, I like to think that most of us try to live lives of quiet or not so quiet inspiration mixed with perspiration.  I think the guy who said, “Where there’s life there’s hope” had it right.  While there’s still blood pumping through your veins and air being sucked into your lungs there’s hope and more than hope.  There’s at least a little excitement.  Even if you’re a hundred there’s still the challenge of trying to get on your feet and remembering what it is you have to do to keep breathing that day.  And until that gets to be too much for your spirit you have a reason to greet the day.

And if you still have anyone in your life who cares whether you live or die you’ve got a world outside yourself to think about.  Maybe people call that quiet desperation.  Or maybe I’m the exception.  Maybe I’ve just been blessed with much more than the mass of men have.  But I kind of doubt it.  I’m just an average guy with the average life.  Well, except for Camera Girl.  She’s pretty great.  But don’t tell her.  She might demand a better contract.

Pay Back for Paying Forward

photog Current Events, OCF, Reclaiming the Family , , ,

Two thirds of July burned through.  But we got the sun and heat the calendar promised.  So, I can’t kick.

Swimming pools are an awful nuisance to the owner especially if he lives in the north.  The winter weather beats the hell out of the polymers that the liner and the filter loop are made out of.  In every practical sense they’re a bad deal.  A dead loss except for one very important aspect.  They attract grandchildren like no other power on Earth.  To paraphrase “Field of Dreams,” “If you fill it, they will come.”  Like a law of nature, a hot summer week, a swimming pool and youngsters react like iron filings to a magnet.

And that’s great.  Provide the pool, some burgers and lemonade and they’ll swim and dive and splash around until their fingers and toes become as wrinkled as prunes.  But why, you might ask, would anyone want to have a bunch of noisy, boisterous, unruly kids around when peace and quiet is so much easier?

Well, the answer is simple.  Grandchildren are the one and only, absolutely authentic, sure-fire fountain of youth that has ever been discovered by mankind.  When you steal away their children away from your children and spoil them rotten with bilious food and frivolous activities; like throwing around a baseball or letting them play a game of hide and seek in your yard, it’s as if you’ve stepped into a time machine.

When you referee their squabbles and join in their silly card games and argue with them about whether T-Rex is stronger than Spinosaurus or whether a dragon that breathes fire is more powerful than one that breathes ice or when they draw birthday cards for you with all the care and concentration that a five-year-old can muster you are transported to a different world.  A much, much better world.

Getting to spend time with your grandkids is the payoff for all the years of work and worry that goes into raising a family.  We try to spend as much time with our kids as we can but work consumes so much of our time.  And worrying about getting them launched into their adult lives steals away so much of the time you have when you’re in the prime of your life.

So having the chance to really experience the small joys of children at play in your later years is imbibing the quintessence of life.  And it makes the prospect of getting old acceptable.  Our mortality is THE fact of life.  We get a span of time on this giddy rock hurtling through space-time.  And sooner than any of us imagine, the sands start building up in the bottom of the hour-glass.  But if we see children and then grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren; well then, we can feel as if we did our part to keep this crazy, confusing, hopelessly conflicted endeavor called the human race staggering down the road for at least another generation or two.  And if after we’re gone they think back on us and smile about something we said or did, well, that’s one kind of immortality.

And that has to be enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.  Because as far as I can tell, that’s about as good as it gets.  And that’s good enough for me.