No office today. I am rethinking the gadding about. Yes, while there is no vaccine and no effective treatment, it’s best to stay in and tough it through. I can work from my kitchen table and go for walks to get out of the house. The walks are actually a brilliant thing, I am getting horrifically fat from the moping about, waiting for a brighter day. I am getting fat, I am ornery but I am ok. I sincerely wish that most of the rest of the world could be at least that, at least ok. Some are really not ok and that is sad.
There is an awful lot of sad news. The news media world is full of the stress. It’s hyper drive bad news. Every corner of our planet home appears to be fraying dangerously. It’s a bit much to digest. While I don’t think turning your back on the news is the best thing, there comes a time when you have to. There is only a bit that an individual can reasonably be expected to do about the mess of life. There is only a bit we can fix. We can try but we have to save ourselves and saving ourselves means to put on our own oxygen mask before we can help the person next to us.
What is your oxygen mask? Mine is in writing, singing, playing piano, reading, eating donuts, baking more food to eat…having a lil’ drinky poo. I can and should modify all that behaviour. I can do it but some times, not very well. I can do other things that are practical and useful but not so easy. I can do things around the house in a fix-up vein but it gets a bit too emotional for me to do a lot. When the pipe I just fixed looks crooked, has a rough or uneven appearance…I beat the heck out of myself. From time to time, I have had to call in a professional to finally get it right. That’s embarrassing. I am not terrible, just a little less precise than I would prefer. My plumbing doesn’t leak but it doesn’t look good. Sigh. Since I have unrealistically high standards, I worry when the pipe leans to the left instead of standing straight up. Some folk just carry on, though not exactly oblivious, necessarily. Some folk are more forgiving of their failings. That is their oxygen mask, the more easily satisfied approach, the more “well, we did what we could” approach. They is smart cookies.
I used to believe that being easily satisfied was taking the lazy approach. Maybe that isn’t true. Maybe, my thinking that in order to be satisfied, all things must be in order and smartly done is faulty. Can you imagine how delicious life would be if, for example, the car wheel fell off – you have no money or skill for repairs and you are able to get out of the vehicle, continue along your way and be grateful the thing didn’t roll over and kill you in the process. You could smile the whole time, finish telling the story, laugh and not even be upset next morning when you are late for work because you had to walk.
What a blissful time it would be with no worry, no fear of the unknown, no reticence toward the future. If you were able to really enjoy things just as they are, how lovely. Things will always be in disarray, the plumbing is always going to lean a little, politics will be scary, grandma will die, the cat won’t come home one day. That is just the way of it. No one, no matter how well they prepare or how hard they try, is immune to living.
Ha. Now I am thinking I should go to the office, have a high calorie snack and a tea, take reasonable precautions but do it anyway. I guess the idea is ‘reasonable precautions’… is that the trick of it? to understand what reasonable is? Ha. I am reasonalby fat, that much is certain and I will reasonably gain more weight, that, too is certain. I am fat and one day, I will be reasonable about my eating and exercise habits. I will repair the fatness. The plumbing is reasonably accomplished but I am going to do it over. It’s reasonable to expect that needs to be done. The stress about all this is what has to go.
That I should accept what is and work with it, not fuss about it…that much is not certain but is necessary. I need oxygen first, though.
Robert On The Air 