drunkoccasionally I do wonder what I am going to do once I can no longer work given that I might not have decided what I want to be when I grow up by that time. and it is alarming that the possibilities will have narrowed somewhat simply by virtue of my having been around for awhile.
I'm probably not going to be a world-class sprinter for instance. when I was six I harbored the delusion that I ran really fast. apparently I ran really hard and pumped my arms like crazy but hardly moved along at all. well it no longer matters as my knees can only barely sustain a trot across the street no matter how quick but I do find it somewhat disheartening to know that that is one dream that is never coming back. I'm only going to get slower from here on out.
but what I am trying to get used to is no longer feeling like I Have Humanity's Answer. I mean I think I have some good ideas and I think there might be a reason to go about noisily advocating for them but it is no longer anything like salvation but more like a way to get along without causing too much pain before we die. this may be another stage in the realizing-you-are-mortal process, wherein it no longer matters if you alter history because, shit, you're not going to be around so who cares and even those who are left aren't going to live much past 70 so why worry about them either.
contrapuntally to that is the realization that life insists on gathering a goodly amount of knowledge and then annihilating it and starting all over again from scratch and repeating this gesture ad nauseum so no matter what wonderful insights I might have the next crew of young whippersnappers isn't going to give a fuck about them.
I think it might be interesting to ponder why the earth has unfolded itself in this endless repetition compulsion. yeah I know all the homilies about life renewing itself and those puppies did seem amazingly amazed at being alive but overall there isn't much point to getting old if your experience dies with you which it does to an extravagent extent. although there might be something hilarious just in that and it might be that hilarity is the best we can hope for and which really isn't all that bad.
so ha. ha ha ha.
