If you look at all the self-help and self-improvement literature, if you listen to gushing politicians declaring their support for continued education and life-long learning, you might think that we waste fewer lives than before.
Add social media and the self expression movement with its iconic festivals and meets, and you might not even we all wrong.
Go to the garage, find a big empty bucket, or two if your shoe size is bigger than 7 1/2. Half fill the buckets with cold water, distribute all the ice from the fridge equally between the buckets, remove your socks, stick both feet into the water, and think.
The problem with our "wasted" lives is, of course, the absence of a good definition. Which makes it a philosophical issue: he who manages to make his definition the one that sticks, wins. A German friend added another aspect to the general philosophy approach, adding that his brother in law is just finishing his philosophy major.
It's not that his arguments prevail through clear logic and facts, I simply can never understand what the hell he has said after hours of discussion.
This post, therefore, skirts the question of the big definition in favor of the example of a recent German retiree. The man is only in his early fifties, with about 40 years of continued work behind him. Hard work, involving wading in rushing swollen streams in the middle of winter, balancing on 25 inch wide boards up at 100 feet and more. Stressful work, involving fishing dead people out of water, and dangerous work with the marvels of modern agriculture.
The pesticides got him.
His hands never stand still, not a second in his waking hours. The meds work, he says, but they mess up sleep patterns, too. And if you wanted to kill me, he adds, just spray some orange or lemon scented air freshener within half a mile and hide my inhaler.
The government officials who decided on his early retirement from their cozy armchairs fought the doctors tooth and nail. Doctors have to pick their battles with the officials, and they fought for this one. In the Casino Government, the odds are stacked in favor of the house, but they did let him go with an adjusted pension. 40 years of contributions for social security benefits barely above what you get if you never work a day in your life sounds cruel to the blogster.
But he smiles: Let me show you what I did in past six months, he says and leads the way to a former pig sty. I got myself some good LED lighting, he flicks the switch and explains as the room with tiny windows is flooded in white light.
In front of us is a three mast sailing vessel, over a yard long. He points at the rigging, a trembling finger almost touching the top of the main mast: see, only the last few lines at the crow's nest are still missing. It's what I do when I wake up after three or four hours of sleep in the middle of the night.
He waves at a heap of thin, broken narrow wooden strips: I go through more planking than a healthy man. But I have the tools, I just made some more when I ran out of ones from the model kit.
That is just awesome, is all the blogster can say. It is honest but inadequate, hollow.
At my last doctor's appointment, the doctor asked how I spent my time these days. They are worried about people like me, I guess. So I explained what I had done so far. The doctor frowned for a split second, then laughed out loud and was extra nice to me when he explained that I will never get better.
Only when the unsteady hand takes just a tiny bit longer than you'd expect to hit the switch on the way out, does the blogster realize that he himself had - for a brief few minutes - looked beyond the illness.
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