As I get older, time has changed. Days, weeks, months and years are compressed, whipping past me like greyhounds on Florida race tracks. But sometimes, minutes and hours drag and I find myself walking from room to room wondering what I should be doing with myself. Guilt sets in.
I went to a friend’s funeral earlier this month. Her accomplishments and involvements were thoroughly resurrected for scrutiny and admiration. She was smart and energetic and was committed to influencing the world she touched for the better. Listening to her accolades, I wondered how I could justify watching television…not just watching television but watching repeat episodes - movies that I’ve watched so many times that I nearly have the dialogue memorized! Or movies so bad that they must have been thrown in “free” when Turner Movie Classics bought out the old studio archieves.
I resolved - yet again! - to make my life count for more. Stumped. I've set another trap to deflate the spirit. I am no good at volunteer work, too many aches and pains for a regular job and too impure to do much else. So what is left? And perhaps the larger question: if hers was a life lived large, can a small life count too?
I read a quote by John Cage recently which seems to me to be the very essence of “optimism.”
“It is essential that we be convinced of the goodness of human nature,
and we must act as though people are good.”
For a good part of my life, I thought of myself as a pessimist. I was wrong.
Only an optimist could live as I have done. I didn’t pick the path that my friend followed but I believe in the basic goodness of human nature and allowed that to lead me most of the time. And that's no small thing.
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The Mint Museum Founders’ Circle - all 21 of them- visited Rochester last week and here are a few things they saw:
Porcelain sculpture
CHRISTINA BRINKMAN
ALBERT PALEY
BILL STEWART
PAUL KNOBLAUCH
WENDELL CASTLE
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