220907 A Morning Walk

I enjoy getting out in the morning and walking.
This morning was nice and cool and as I walked I could take time to look at all that surrounded me. I don’t always take the time to do that. It seems that in our time these days we are in a constant rush. We go from one thing to another without taking a break in between tasks. I’m retired and yet I continue to rush from one thing to another; why do I do that? I can find no good reason for doing so. As I walked along this morning I saw many of my neighbors rushing off to work in their cars and trucks. I wondered how many of them enjoyed the work they were rushing off to do? They had to get to work on time, rush through the day to get assigned tasks completed, rush home to prepare suppers, likely get laundry going, put kids to bed and then finally after a long day that may have been miserable for them, maybe have an hour to relax before going to sleep. They then have to begin all over again the next morning. I remember those days well. Life was work, work, work to put a roof over my head, buy groceries and buy things I needed or wanted. At one point I realized that all those things I had, I did not own; in fact those things owned me. I was working for them. After our home was burglarized, I thought all my work to buy things was taken away by someone I did not know and he didn’t have a job, but in one day took all I had worked for for years. I never replaced those things that a criminal had stolen. These days I have little worth taking and what I do have can be easily replaced. There are no more irreplaceable mementoes. It’s all just stuff and it’s all old and worn. If I am burglarized today, all I need to do is clean up the mess burglars make when they rifle through my home looking for something to pawn. They will walk away with little of value. This is not a problem for me anymore, because there’s nothing I can’t live without.

I have rambled away on this long enough; it’s time to sit back and casually relax for the rest of my day in retirement, while I try to avoid rushing from one thing to another. Old habits are tough to break. Old age is impossible to avoid, so I live with it, embrace it and go about my day. There is no alternative that I know of, other than carry on with my life.