There’s ample evidence for alarm over just how wretched the toilet water might swirl in the coming months, but I ain’t no plumber. My contention is that doing okay for now is as good as it’s ever going to get for you on this rock. You’d better appreciate what you’ve got when you’ve got it.
Earth is always spinning and you’ll never know exactly what’s coming with the next turn. We’re mortals on a dynamic planet where most of what transpires is as far beyond our control as it is uncertain. Here’s an historical example from my lockdown reading to illustrate:
At age 31, Atahualpa seemed destined to have a long reign ahead of him as the new ruler of the unassailable Incan Empire. He agreed to meet a small band of bizarre foreigners and found himself garroted to death and burnt shortly thereafter. Everything he valued would be wiped out in the ensuing years.
The monarch who supplanted him was Charles V. In addition to the New World, he held much of Europe in a personal union, making him the most powerful man since the Roman Caesars. What he got was perpetual conflict, often multiple wars at once.
He found himself exhausted, crippled by gout and admitted in his abdication speech that he’d been able to accomplish few of his goals despite all of his efforts. He seemed broken by the disparity between what was bestowed upon him and what he’d achieved.
What struck me from plowing through some biographies of Charles is that no matter how much power you possess, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you want. As dissidents, we certainly have a few objectives that stand a decent chance of being accomplished, God willing. However, what’s probably most important is that we have a struggle for the truth.
What I mean is that an outcome might provide despair or gratification, whereas a struggle provides purpose. Doing what you believe is the best you can offer for a worthy cause ought to bring daily satisfaction rather than apprehension about the end results. The best you have to offer lies entirely within your control.
I’ll admit that sure ain’t easy to do, but it’s what I’m trying to stay focused on. I hope this rant made some kind of sense to you. I’ve quit drinking until the 4th of July so I’m trying to inspire myself with reason.
I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.
As the old saying goes, “adversity builds character.” There’s been a noticeable dearth of character-building adversity the last several decades in the ‘land of plenty’ for anyone old enough (and fortunate enough) to have struggled through adverse times and circumstances.
My father, God rest his soul, was a heating and a/c repairman by trade. When I was about ten years old he began taking me to work with him, teaching me some of the ‘tricks of the trade.’ We lived in an old, rundown country rent house five miles from town. It took me awhile going to work with my dad to begin to understand why it was we lived basically ‘hand to mouth’ my entire childhood. It wasn’t because my father was lazy or lacked work to provide a better living for us; it was because my father was a giver, who would literally lose money working for old widow ladies on fixed incomes before he would let them go a day without air conditioning, heating, a properly working washer or dryer. And so on. Many an old widow lady lived well at our expense, but that too was character-building for us kids, and my wise father knew it.
We had no air-conditioning in our house despite the fact that was my father’s business; we instead had a water cooler whose pump seemed inoperative half the time for lack of funding to replace the bad one. As a young boy I slept many a summer night out in the screened-in front porch of that house because the temperature and humidity which accrued in my room during the heat of the daytime was virtually unbearable. And as I’ve iterated many many times in adulthood, “I like my air-conditioning; I might have to once again live without it before I die, but it won’t be for lack on my part of making sure it is available at all times.”
A couple of days ago (Sunday evening, to be exact) my stepmother called saying her a/c had suddenly quit working. I’m not my father, so it took me three hours to get to the bottom of the problem that would have taken him about fifteen minutes to figure out, if that. I spent a lot of that three hours reaching back into the repository of that invaluable training and knowledge my father had provided me so long ago in my formative years. Finally, I was able to nail the problem down to a bad transformer. Next day ran to Locke’s and got the new part. Cost of repair? Thirty bucks. Our fifteen year-old son, Sam, was with me the entire time taking notes, filing them away in that repository of knowledge that will one day be beneficial to someone he loves. And not the least of those lessons will be, I should hope, that it is better to give than to receive, and to be thankful for the opportunity.
I’ve got the same philosophy on AC.
You must be very proud of your father, they just don’t make men like him anymore. Always good to pass those skills an good character, I always appreciated my father doing that for me an I’m sure your son will as well.