TIME SELFISHLY SPENT
Sunday Nov. 3, 2013
Viewing anything today or tomorrow through lens of yesterday’s mistake is logically crazy, but we all do it every day. We should stop that. Right now. Life is ahead.
Our extra hour, already gone – no point trying to recover it, or anything else gone before, life is ahead once more. No regrets – just learning, no reliving bad choices (they are never really good or bad – they are choices, they are facts, they are the history – there is no changing). I have nothing to say – absolutely nothing to say. At the same time, I have so much to say, but nobody to say it to.
What time is it, really? Time view – mine, shifts at glacial speed. Or STOPS, shifts – immediately, faster than knee-jerk. Not this shift back to standard time, though I enjoyed the extra hour of slumber – but it seemed an hour wasted because that time selfishly slept rather than sharing an hour’s activity.
Stupid, like fretting over a hang-nails when someone’s been maimed, it just seems so ridiculously self-pitying to wallow in lonely-hating when so many real problems exist for so many. And, seriously, isn’t my own situation my creation? Yours too – you made yours. As did the next guy, next gal … we have no one to blame for all things we’ve done or never done or never had courage to try. We are failed, failing, pitiful waning excuses for backbones with our flesh attached.
Empty, in search of filling up? Empty – enjoying quiet, calm and steady.
Doing things when I’m ready, compartmentalization of routine functions, efficiently managing time. Or is it allocating activity so the lone-stretches aren’t long-alone stretches on Sunday mornings without noise or joys. Is it random that works?
Is life just piñata whacking, blindfolded random bad luck, or good fortune trumping bad management when we find, to great surprise, someone we’ve known or worked with a long time becomes important to us in ways we never imagined. We choose some, with great care (boyfriends, wives, partners, employees, neighbours) – so much diligence in making right-est best choices from worthy options . . .
Have you tried on clothes, made a serious well thought-thru decision – brought them home with great glee, worn them once or twice and left them to rot on a hanger at the back end of the closet? Conversely do you sit around home in a comfy old sweater you acquired because you had an expiring voucher and the shop closed in 10 minutes, a choice had to be made?
And people are like that, aren’t they? Some come and go, impress us for a moment and then disappear into the void – opening up to the next person, but not to us, finding their own weird formula for making good decisions or better decisions while looking over shoulders in rearward mirrors, haunted by all the bad ones they made. Some seemed close when they weren’t. Why did I need that illusion? Some seemed elusive, worth pursuit. Why did need that delusion?
I wonder about that. About my choices, so many made when having direction or knowing one from the other was not part of my youthful vocabulary. I look at people who made smart choices – schools, mates, careers, location – and their healthy status today makes mine look pale. They have dollars where I have zeroes, they have commas too … and they have exotic trips and precious things, power and influence or maybe they just have a pile of cash but no friends, or a dental plan but nothing to smile about, stories to tell but nobody to tell them to.
Sunday mornin’ blues, not tunes but feelings, when regretted mistakes and miss-steps play over in my brain. Perhaps because I need to. Or because I have time. These thoughts don’t dominate, ever, but surface when they need to I suppose. For some reason I need to re-hash and re-beat myself up a little more. Not for long. Between cup of coffee #3 and the end of the pot, but not longer. I have too much good to do today to waste time feeling bad. I have people I admire who have so little time, I’m embarrassed to think I spend time wasted that way.
Don’t waste my time don’t waste yours – we have none to waste. This day has all of yesterday’s ideas, dreams and unfinished business. Today, I will add to that. I’ll add a lot. Sure, I’ll trash some. I’ll dash some. I’ll defeat arguments of some and steam-roll over others in search of the next new great idea, like walking one foot in front of the other I’ll keep writing, putting down one word after another after another after another.
Mark Kolke
291,532
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: -3C / 27F, strong breeze, it snowed all day yesterday, snowing again now – not monstrous volume but enough to cover everything with heavy damp snow, so every laden branch that moves in the breeze is really feeling the weight of it, wet snow, more falling – great for snowballs and snowmen, Gusta loving her traction, coated in white
