The brook out there bubbles and flows, leaps and grows smooth. Even assuming I any longer wanted to, it takes energy to go with that flow, to wrestle with socially au courant issues. Bit by bit, I rest in the shallows and learn to be content with whatever the hell the quieter, uninvolved times provide. The ability and desire to leap into the social flow is just too tiring and too far from the current truth. Occasionally I am overtaken by caring or imagining that no one cares.
Like everyone else, I am stuck with who I am and that person has a harder and harder time pretending he is part of the flow and focus and bubbling passage of social time. It is enough, a little at a time, to ruminate and munch like some languid cow.
But is that interesting? Is that a position out of which to write a newspaper column? I doubt it. No one goes to a basketball game and keeps an eye on those players who sit on the bench.
Find a nook and look at the little things with fresh eyes. My four-year-old neighbor has reminded me to do that. He, like me, could not care less about going with the flow. Instead, we find small joy together in unexpected places, ignoring the sixty-year gap that lies between us. Of course he, alas, has yet to 'grow up'.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to let go of things, to discover how unimportant so much is.
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