luxury items

This morning, the wisps and tendrils of recollection insist ...

The daughter of an old Internet chum answered my request for an update on her father, a man who was  once full of wry humor and good common sense when it came to the practice of Buddhism.

My dad does nothing. He's only 63 which I don't think is that old really. He's just totally given up. He smokes and watches programmes about end of the world disasters mainly. He sleeps a lot too. No interest in Buddhism. Unable to read or wrote or use a computer. Not that he tries. He can converse to a small degree but gets frustrated when he can't say what he wants to as the words just won't come out so just tends to not say much. He won't do physio to improve his walking. He won't practice his speech therapy. I guess it's the brain damage I just would have hoped some of his fighting spirit would have shone through but alas nothing! It's not a burden to me as my mum does most of the work. But she also works full time so my brother helps out. He needs washing, he can feed himself but needs meals preparing etc (not that he ever cooked before mind lol!) He can just about hobble into the kitchen and make himself a tea with his one good arm. All things which could be improved if he were to do his exercises, practice his speech etc but there's no desire.

The email note made me wonder how many luxury items in anyone's life might be overlooked and ignored in favor of brighter and more elevated baubles.

Since nature is wanton in its profligacy and since man is part of nature, I guess there's no reason to complain about the wastefulness of human life ... or wonder whether wastefulness were ever truly wasteful.