LIVING CONDITIONS WITH MORE LIFE

Living conditions are never permanent.

That’s the good news.

Things may seem like they’ll last forever, and they might, but we don’t.

We’re here until we’re not.

I think about that a lot, the idea of being here, then not being here.

People drift away, disappear, vanish.

But do they really vanish?

What if you grew up with mom and dad and an older sister, only to learn that your sister was your mom and mom was actually grandma?

That would be a tough one to figure out, tougher to keep hidden.

No one told Jack?

 

Somebody That You Used To Know

If you live in population centers, meaning any place with at least one stop light, you see strangers every day.

Even if you see them regularly, like a store checker, or librarian, you still don’t know them.

If you do know them well enough to say hello and mean it, you still don’t know them.

The only people I think I know best are those without big gaps in their lives that go unaccounted for.

I like accountable, and if that’s missing, I like believable.

For me, accountable means writing the same blog post 3652 times over twelve years.

Call it checking in; I’m still here.

You can’t keep up the writing pace if you go on a soul searching retreat with an open ended time frame.

Are writers even allowed to write if they take a vow of silence and live in a monkery?

Strangely enough I’ve never thought to get into my own shit so much that I need a good look around, or live the quiet monk life.

My only break from the goals of everyone I knew, people with a biological mandate to find a partner and reproduce, people dedicated to higher education and a better life, was joining the Army for two years.

Other than that I’ve been plowing along and taking things as they come at me.

Call me reactive, not proactive, most of the time.

 

The wife and I were in the car talking about our lives before we met and married up, before we had kids who made it to adulthood and married two of the best women I’ve ever met.

We were talking about living conditions.

She had had women roommates and never shacked up with a guy; I was the opposite.

 

Wife: I don’t believe in it.

Me: Believe in what?

Wife: Living together without being married.

Me: Just don’t blame me.

Wife: For what?

Me: Don’t blame me for being such a catch that the women of the world used every trick in the book to get me.

Wife: Speaking for all women of the world, we don’t blame you.

Me: The women I knew all had a plan and I was part of it.

Wife: How did that work out.

Me: We always broke up.

Wife: How old were you then?

Me: Mid-twenties. Looking back is kind of wild.

Wife: I’m sure.

Me: I’m glad I wasn’t in my mid-forties. We’re supposed to learn things along the way.

Wife: What have you learned?

 

A Way Of Life Disappears

I took an inventory of what I knew during my history studies in college.

It’s bound to happen when you read a lot of books.

The time frame I came up lacking in was between the Spanish American War and WWI, 1900-1914.

After reading Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves, I was more interested.

That was a time in which the automobile industry emerged, powered flight took off, and weapons of mass destruction were in the future.

It felt like a bright new world.

Then came the darkness of 1914, more darkness in 1939, and the struggle continues.

Living conditions change when people leave our lives, when they ‘opt out.’

Living conditions change when one nation preys on another and mass populations get squeezed to death.

Why not find ways to add more life to our time together.

It’s a modest goal with humble origins.

And, best of all, it makes the world a better place during our time together.