This year was off to an exhausting, sputtering start. Towards the end of the previous December we moved (again) and last year's holidays became frenetic, but not because we had succumbed to the trappings of commercialism and had bought senselessly. Moving one's earthly possessions is a task unsuitable for weak bodies and minds. It demands exemplary logistics, interminable patience, and the inexhaustible hope that things shall ultimately right themselves and return to normal.
We've had to move five to six times in the last twenty years or so, and each one put my wife's genius and stamina to the test. She's passed them all with flying colors! I would not know how to survive without her. I'd be totally lost and useless. I feel sorry, though, that I put her through all these, this perennial state of lack and want and enforced mobility. She deserves much better. She never complains, but I always sense her longing for more, for what she truly deserves. She wants to get settled down and not be weary any longer. Unfortunate combinations of my bad decisions, bad luck, and bad timing have led to the loss of my dreams. There simply is no getting them back as everything conspires against it. Time and opportunity lost are lost forever.
Not very unlike my life, this year showed a lot of promise at the start. My wife won a very minor prize in the lottery, and this ignited her superstition that it foreboded a very well-off year ahead. This was somewhat a comforting illusion for me. Desperate men cling to losing propositions. And superstitions. Then an assumably better job seemed to land on my lap. I ended the previous year resolved to taking a gamble and moving on from stagnant work, and for a moment the opportunity presented itself as an answer to my supplications. But then "If it's too good to be true then it most probably isn't" held sway, and the job became my shortest ever. The promising job bolstered our financial confidence temporarily, and we thus ended up with a new car with monthly payments for five years in the garage. Car, like all new cars today, has more technology than is necessary. Overkill, if you ask me. It strongly dissuades me from my tinkering ways, as I might cause some seemingly trivial wire, screw, or nut to come loose or unfasten, thereby rendering the car inoperable. Oh, how I miss our good ole smoke-belcher! Old-school, so easy to maintain in the eleven years it was with us. Never did it let us down or leave us stranded. Not even once. I always managed to keep it running. Occasionally replaced parts here and there, some repairs every now and then, and it always came to life no matter what. Once we complete payments on the technology-riddled car I plan to replace it with something old-school, well-maintained and still reliable, so that I may have some peace of mind. Modernity and technology only apparently make my life better, more bearable and convenient; True, but is the old things that give me anchor. The future doesn't hold a lot of promise for me now, I ascertain, but I can always go back to long gone, happy yesterdays and find some hidden inspiration and perspective. These, I hope, will sustain me until I complete my journey in this life.
I've gotten wind of some people I know, a number of them my contemporaries, who have passed on, falling short of the so-called "ripe old age". I was mildly surprised by some of these occurrences, although for many years now news of death has not jolted or derailed me. I do not mean it hasn't made me feel despondent and miserable because it has, especially when people I hold dear have died; but more like early on I've come to view death as very inevitable, an encounter that will happen sooner or later. Time and this earth move on even when multitudes die. We hardly make a dent in the grand scheme of things. The universe has always existed and will always exist even without our collective dreams and endeavors. I suppose entire worlds have become extinct, and more extinctions are forthcoming, but the whole of Creation couldn't care less. I therefore find it somewhat mysterious (and amusing) that so many among us have an infinite capacity for greed, power, and braggadocio, always wanting and taking more and showing off to the world. It is so addicting. I'm no less guilty, what with the possessions I pine for! When death comes and calls, there is no reprieve or delay, and nothing that we have ever accomplished or possessed or worried about will matter. On life's cessation they all become moot.
It is with this nth realization of this fact that I've developed a taste for another film genre: That of rather old and not-so-old people who make the most of their finite lives. Or at least some of them try. A number of them succeed, and some don't. The latter, though, always manage to find some sort of redemption in the end. I wish that in some ways I can be like these fictional characters, that my previously promising and exciting life now become bland will find some saving grace at the end. It will then have become worth reminiscing.
