Well, having comfortably arrived at three times nineteen years -- I have had time to grow up three times over -- it really seems like it's time to have my ducks lined up. Instead, they wander as badly as ever.
The whole project of having one's house in order: does it even make sense? And if, as I suspect, it doesn't, is there a meaning behind it that should be grasped? In short, should I make a last, desperate struggle to understand and control my life, or has that struggle been a mistake from first to last, a confusion of life with narrative? Impressionable children who read too much may grow up prone to this confusion. You are a brave little monkey and of course you may play your trumpet in the show.
What would giving up even look like? I can't imagine.
But lately especially, the impulse to improve myself begins to seem tawdry and mean. Was I really placed here by an all-knowing Providence in order to struggle each day to eat more vegetables and fewer french fries? Even setting aside my tendency to the grandiose, it seems a little petty. I don't have to accuse myself of poetic genius to think that there are larger things I should attend to more, even in the domestic sphere. The effort and anguish don't match the project.
I am so much wiser now, so much more in control of my circumstances, so much more insulated from the scorn and praise of others... and yet, I am more at the mercy of habit than I have ever been. My freedom seems not to have expanded, but to have shrunk. This can't be right.
Adulthood seems to just be a fallacy.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you have to accept you've got to go around again.
I think that as one gets older expectations are narrowed and possibilities limited. Time does that. There's just so much a person can accomplish in the time allotted. But you, Dale, are younger than 3 of my children. You have lots of time left. Then, too, really old age (where I am) confers a certain freedom to say or do lots of things younger people can't get away with.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what that freedom is supposed to be. If anything, my concept of it has been changing all the time. Today, I enjoyed the freedom of being considered invisble at a director's meeting, while on other days, I enjoy the freedom of hiding behind excentric, old woman attitudes and opening my doors to strangers and of not giving a damn.
ReplyDeleteI never bought the idea that age will bring refinement or wisdom. And don't you start looking for it now.
Oh, not to worry! I don't want either.
ReplyDelete