Notes From a Journal: This World and Time
Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2020
Notes for a post re Identity - thoughts re dying and looking to the future with reflections on the past and its significance - pleasures and reassurance or regret.
With the world around us - in Washington especially. How are those devoted to protecting or ignoring the genuine evils of Trump - and, by extension, those in the government who enable and support his behavior, illegal and otherwise? McConnell is not young. How, when his health declines, when he will seriously begin to assess his behavior, will he consider the worth of his time in office hoarding money that no longer has value? Will there be an ounce of achievement upon which to feel proud? Or is he following Trump because he also is simply immoral? Is it possible such minds die without a reckoning of some sort?
Ebenezer Scrooge comes to mind.
Where is there an adult who has not contemplated death over the past year - ones existential dilemma: past and future?
Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020
Wednesday November 25, Thanksgiving Eve.
Beginning my 86th year, filled, like the last, by a year dominated by a plague. Reflecting on how much of my life has been fortunate - and why. How much is chance - unexplainable and fortunate - and how much does one have to credit others from childhood. Will my efforts to assist those around me daily be satisfactory from, perhaps, that modest sense of regret and guilt for not having done more for those less fortunate around me.
And from where, I wonder, does that notion arise? My first thought is recall the models of my youth. My second is how fortunate have I been to have had those models - worthy selfless souls who, were they alive, would not acknowledge their contributions.
So how does one plan, to the degree its possible, to face if not embrace the second part of this decade if blessed with relatively fine health and a general remaining wit?
My first thought is by aiming to do what can be done with ones remaining abilities - health and wit-wise. Particularly in the tenets of most of my past life as a teacher of one sort or another.
The standards and purpose of which remain in the consciousness to our last breath, I'm convinced. And how fortunate I am to have acquired them.
I'm comfortable in assessing my feelings, at this point - assuming it's possible these confessions might be of benefit to others - who have shared any bit of the sentiments I've just blurbed. That is, anyone with pen and paper at hand.
What can be sensed or realized; what can one look backward to with pride, and forward to with hope, as Robert Frost observed in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man"?
Nothing is fixed, so long as one is blessed with breath and even a bit of wit, I've been wisely advised recently by my son.
Speaking of time: my old wall clock, purchased in the 1960s from the shop of my sister and son-in-law, silent and timeless for many months, was given the last rites today and replaced from a near-by antique shop, by a worthy Westminster whose abilities, as I write, are mildly chiming four times an hour, reminding our household just how time flies.
