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LIFE IS TOLERABLY SORT OF FAIRLY FAIR
Monday Aug. 3, 2015
He didn’t think life fair …
“And I can’t be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight” – on its face, apt description of normal life – or the cranky rant of J.D. Salinger suffering manic-depressions zig zags. His Catcher in the Rye (I loved it at fifteen), regarded among the best novels ever. Was his reclusive bi-polar suffering just simply talent-gone-strange?
Grief, as much an essential life-part as any other: vacillations of pain, joy, sustenance, vision, despair, kindness, blindness, numbness – real-life carnival fun house of mirrors, scary but not fatal – exhilarating emotion-coaster ride.
We all get our share.
Some skate unscathed (they must be looking over their shoulder all the time).
High delight, always short-term. Unabated, would it still be a high delight?
High-low volatility fascinates us - politicians and celebrities on display, their best/worst.
In our backwater lives too – pain-pleasure, love-hate, win-lose, rise-fall, work-play, he said-she said, ambition-failure, trophies-participant ribbons …
Life IS fantastic. Fair balance, never guaranteed, how we treat each other – again, not measures of grief or high delight – but something worth the striving. We can’t control much of life, but we can control our attitude, our gratitude, how we treat each other.
Every day people having every day griefs and delights – dreading one, loving the other in some safe place called our own rooms in our own homes. Every sad moment must have a corresponding glad one somewhere in our balance. It must. Otherwise we’d all be strange as Salinger.
Not fair, judging Salinger by one out of context statement.
Not fair for any of us to be judged that way.
But we are.
Every day.
Mark Kolke
written / published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: 14C/58F, overcast and calm, traffic holiday-light and our walking streets were secluded – even those annoying magpies seem to have taken the weekend off. Amazing how good it feels to be walking pain-free again. I find I’m far more interested in what I see when I’m not guarding my steps. Gusta seems completely unaware of any difference … as perhaps she should.
Reader feedback:
THAT feeling
This and That: What a glorious weekend! I just finished reading Musings as usual (having read it the past 2 weeks from the Black Sea coast of Romania) and know you're doing well. At least, no major complaints. DItto here. My dad is 95 and fading fast; my daughter in Romania has cancer - but I think she will recover. My dog has cancer and won't... My 2 best friends have cancer and their prognosis is undetermined as yet. And so it goes. It's that time of life, it seems. New lessons to learn. Oh for the days when the biggest challenge was a broken heart. On an unrelated note, I don't know if we've talked much or often about my medical tourism business in Namibia (www.namibiahealthtourism.com). The marketing campaign is just beginning, directed by Coffee Creative in Durban. I'm attending the Medical Tourism trade show in Montreal later this month as we're directing initial efforts to North American clients, but major marketing decisions are being headed by Team Pretoria (we're a 3-nation endeavour). Still, you're my go to guy with marketing ideas. I'm currently paying a 15% finder's fee based on whatever funds are derived from anyone you might refer. You know everyone so... Just a thought, my dear. Not much time for "stray" thoughts these days, but you're always close in any event. Consider yourself hugged, CB, Calgary, AB
Hello Mark, I have been away from your site for some time but now I am back. Sometimes we let life take us in directions we should never have gone. No regrets, they were my choices and many lessons have been learned, some of which I hope never to revisit. I am catching up on your archives and enjoying the read very much, not only from you but also from your readers’ comments. I lost myself and what was really important and now rediscovering "me". I am enjoying life more than I have in quite some time and look forward to every new day with joy and peace of mind, body and soul. I'm definitely a work in progress but well worth it. Thank you for your daily introspection and observations ...you inspire me..., LM, Sparks, NV
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