Summing Up

Finding a Heroic Purpose

 

Today, it was a beautiful day in Vancouver. As often as not, we have had sun here rather than rain. It was truly glorious.  I am hoping for more of the same this year. I am hoping for the same for the rest of my life.

I have reached an age when I am counting my blessings. I am a happy man with my Bride by my side. My kids are flourishing and they even call me up to see how I am doing. If it rains too much I can pick up and move to a place where the sun shines. I can read about the storms and watch them on TV. I can even dial them on my Iphone. I can see the snow and ice without feeling their bite. I can watch the suffering of multitudes from the safety of my armchair. I am rubbing my tummy. Things are good, right?

I left the workaday world almost twenty-five years ago. Is that what we are supposed to do then, we rest on our laurels? Do we creep off to some corner to quietly wait for an unheralded end? Is that what happens to all heroes? They walk away from the battlefield and wait to die? That didn’t, seem like the right thing to do to me. Don’t we have to find heroic things to do as long as we are alive, as long of the craving for challenge remains> As long as the juice of desire to accomplish great things still rages within us? It didn’t seem right to me!

We believe that we all have the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. In spite of so much in the world that speaks to the contrary, inchoate forces that seem bent on bringing us down, we have imbibed this belief with our mother’s milk. Like a drowning person, we seek, always, to rise to the surface for that breath of freedom, for that state of Nirvana, a search, not for Buddhist nothingness, but a search for everythingness, for happiness, however fleeting.

But I sometime still feel driven.

Why was I born in Canada rather than in some godforsaken place that we all know about, all read about, shudder about? I have travelled in Africa, in Asia, in Central and South America. I know whereof I speak. I went to places to try and make them better places. We all know even one person can make a world of difference. I fear that I did not make a difference in those places. The only place I ever have made a substantial positive difference was here in Canada. Consequent on my intervention life was materially better for many people.

I have had to accept that I have not found fame and fortune. My mark on history will be almost impossible to find, so fleeting was my time in the public arena. I have outlived a good many of my contemporaries who might at least have known my name. No one has beaten a path to my door, full of wonder at the magnificence of my exploits. My children are leading their productive lives and we have the joy of anticipation for the wonders our grandchildren will present us with. They represent the ultimate glory that I could have had some part in achieving.

And yet, I ask myself, is this the end of the heroic phase of my life? Am I too greedy for glory? Am I just an aged wreck ready for the dust bin.

A wonder of my life has been the achievement of wedded bliss with the woman I lost my heart to more than seventy years ago. My performance as a husband has not been the most heroic. My current Bride, captured after all those years, has taken the trouble to instruct in this area every day. I do believe I am showing some improvement every day, but there is always room for more.

We all have our projects, our aspirations, things we feel are important for us to realize. These things that we are hoping to do, they are not just for ourselves. They are prizes that we wish to have to show to others. That showing to others is what is really important to us. It certainly is for me. Showing those prizes to that special person, to other people, provides us with the validation that we seek.

 

If that is not there in our lives, it is as if we are missing an anchor that gives us stability. That is what we want when we bring our ship of life back to port after our adventures on the high seas. Indeed, without that, there may be no port that yields us a safe harbor. Without that we are condemned to seek restlessly, and indeterminately, for that place where we are at home, where we can find peace.

Is there room now in our world for a risen messiah, one who might change the rules around the world so there was biblical justice among men? I thought it might be me at one time, but it will have to be someone else. 

There are so many life instances worthy of memory that deserve recounting. I remember when my child curled a hand around my finger, smiled at me as I tucked them in at night, laughed at my jokes when on an outing together. What can surpass a moment of communion between lovers, who revel in being husband and wife? When I caress a curve that is sublime as if I own it, I feel the joy of that communion.

There were times when soaring music brought me to tears of joy, scenes before my eyes that took my breath away, a meal I consumed that made me rock in my chair with pleasure. I remember the ecstasy in creature comforts like a soft cashmere sweater on a chilly day, resting for some contemplation in a favorite chair, viewing a home painstakingly assembled most pleasing to the eye. What a pleasure it is to fall into bed, at last, after exhausting hours, after exhausting years, in frantic pursuit of illusory objectives. I am paying more attention to ensuring that every day we have is the best for us that it possibly can be.

I recall my pleasure in fighting a gale, pitting my strength against the wind that sought to impede my way. What about tramping through new-fallen snow, waist high, everything around so crisp and bright? Remembering the scent of a glorious springtime, the riot of color in a Canadian autumn, the sense of being one with nature tramping alone through a silent forest, I hug myself with the joy of being alive in my native land.

And yet, I still want more, I still hunger for more. I write poems, books of poems. I have written a book of memoirs and will write another one, something that will lift men’s hearts, and women’s hearts too. We just need to give the world time to appreciate what I have on offer and beat a path to my door.

 Accompanied by my Bride, my world is a continuous round of good times. My karma is working, isn’t it? I think we will go out  for a coffee down at the corner, or have a Montreal bagel, a New York pizza, or lamb chops, medium rare, at the local Greek. I am surrendering control now over how the world should be run. You are on your own, so hope you know what you are doing,

Do you think I am still too greedy for glory?.