Wondering on a Friday Afternoon

It's a Friday afternoon and I'm home from work. I've been home all week, sick with bronchitis.

I was supposed to be with Richard right now, being relieved of my various pains under the magic of his hands. I probably would've cancelled anyway because I wasn't feeling well enough. But as it turns out his mum is dying and so he had to go to be with her. And I'm feeling shit about that because... well, it's just an awful thing to have to do - watch your mother die.

So rather than being gently massaged into a beautiful little happy space, I instead have the afternoon to sit here and contemplate death and life.

In the words of the dear and wonderful Denver Doug, I've been wondering. Wondering what it means to be happy and why some people have so little and still seem to be happy and others of us have so much and but have such little happiness.

I was also wondering what it means to be successful and how one might define success in life... when I die will my life have been worthwhile? And why? Is it enough to bring two boys into the world and raise them up to be decent men?

Why do I feel at the moment that I am too stretched in all directions and doing no single thing very well. If I am one of the lucky ones in society - good salary, good job, house - then why do I not feel lucky? Why do I feel trapped by a mortgage and a relentless grind? I would so love to give up work... I ache with sheer tiredness and exhaustion some days... a weariness that just seeps into my bones. Never time to stop. Never time to take a break. Never time... I can't even take a real holiday because almost all my leave gets used as sick leave, for myself and the kids. This has been going on for years... endless work, sickness, kids. On the weekends, so great is the number of things I have to think about sometimes, and so huge my exhaustion, that I end up paralyzed, doing nothing...

And yet I have to feel that something that I do is worthwhile, else why would I stay alive? I don't know what that is, yet. Raising my boys, yes, of course. I could never let them down. I will always be there for them.

But what else? Photography? I'm smart enough to know that I will never be good enough to matter. And I'm not saying that to try and elicit compliments on my photography. I'm saying it because - in truth - so few photograhers actually do really matter. So surely there must be something else that I can contribute to the world besides a few shallow photographs.

But what?

Ech... enough brooding and navel-gazing. Time to think about picking up kids. :)

It's actually worse than that; in order to answer the questions, you have to first figure out what it means to have your life be worthwhile. Worthwhile to who? You? Your kids? The world at large?

The good news is that we all hit this problem at about this age, and we mostly work our way through it. We don't necessarily figure out what it means to have a worthwhile life. But we typically decide that what we have isn't too bad. I read a study a couple of years ago that showed that 42 years old is the height of the dark teatime of the soul, the point at which we're most dissatisfied with our lot in life. We're just starting to come to terms with the fact that we're not going to be astronauts (although I did enjoy my day at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday, I know now for sure I won't) or whatever we thought we might be when we were 10 or 21 or 29.

We're both only a year past that typical rock-bottom. I take some comfort in knowing that it gets better. It helps me get through the nagging doubts, disappointments, and fears. It ain't fun while it lasts, but I'm led to believe it doesn't last forever. I find that brings me a certain degree of detachment from the problem.

I don't know if this helps; all I know is that's how I seem to be working my way through it. Check back with me in ten and twenty years to see if I was right. :-)

You make a difference to me. For that I thank you.

Thank you Ralph. I guess I would like my life to be worthwhile to me... but I also would like to think that I've contributed something to the world, rather than just taken and consumed.

You're right about the dark teatime of the soul... only I feel like I've been going through this crisis for, oh, about five years now :) It has to stop soon, huh? Tell me yes, even if you're lying :)

Hope I do get to check in about that in twenty years time... hope you're still blogging then (well, in twenty years there won't be blogs, it'll be something else, but you know what I mean), and that we're still in touch.

Mikel, you are welcome. Glad I made a difference somewhere :)