Mid-Life Crisis


A ridiculously optimistic title unless I live to be, oh, 120 or so. Make that 121.5. Revise to read “Post-Mid-Life-Crisis.”

A number of events occurred this past year that shook the core of my belief systems leaving my once dearly held self-confidence in a most disagreeable muddle. What I once knew as truth is not. What’s more, it never was.

Uncle Howard, (my go-to guy for sage advice,) says realizing you don’t know nothin about nothin is good. That it frees the mind from self-imposed notions (read that as “rigid”) conceived over the years and opens a door to real clarity. Here’s hoping he’s right.

Apparently this is not an overnight process. I constantly second guess myself, regardless of how inconsequential in the greater scheme of things.

I miss the self-assured confidence of those good old know-it-all days. I’d have tossed off a one-liner then: enlightenment is over-rated. Which still strikes me as funny. Yup, not an overnight process.

Comments

Catherine said…
Well, it would be comforting to think that we have done nothing but become wise as we have aged but ..... the reality is something less satisfying. I tend to fall into the 'hindsight is 20/20' category. Thank heavens for humor ... if we couldn't laugh at ourselves we'd be in a world of hurt.
Thu Jan 24, 09:07:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tastes like Chicken

Image
  Jim visited brother Dan in Palau mid 70s and came back with some wild stories of these gloriously beautiful tropical islands.  The ones that stuck with me are pretty much food related, go figure.  There was an open-air movie theatre in Peleliu filled with wooden benches for seating.  Rats were bold enough to scavenge food whenever, so movie viewers kept their feet up on the forward bench.   Hamburgers were served with a cabbage leaf for greenery, there being no iceberg lettuce on the island.  He met our friend Virginia there, she was maybe 13.  That girl took down fruit bats with a sling shot, a treat for her grandmother. They are a large bat species with a two-foot wingspan. She’d spot a roosting fruit bat hanging upside down from a tree branch, pop a small rock into the slingshot, eyeball the angle and let loose.  She had incredible aim.  She’d  nonchalantly balance in a squat to  husk a coconut wit...
Read more

Ethel strikes back

Image
  Grandma was a teacher and she drove the 18 miles from Powers to Myrtle Point every school day.  It’s a pretty drive on a narrow road that hugs the hillside high above the snaking south fork of the Coquille River, past high pastures and a few scattered houses. One day there went Ethel on her morning commute when she noticed “Howard Post” boldly painted on a large rock embedded in the hillside.  She kept going and there was another one.  Then another one. For a stretch of several miles young master Howard took it into his adolescent brain to spray paint his name on many, many exposed boulders in the hillside.   My grandmother’s solution to this embarrassment was to buy her own can of spray paint and on the way home that day, wearing a dress, (she wore only dresses then,) she stopped the car and over-painted every “Howard Post” she could reach.   It took many years for that paint to fade.  
Read more

Pasta ala Norcina from America's Test Kitchen

Image
I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.   Any recipe from their site that I’ve cooked has turned out beautifully.   The great thing is they do all the testing and tweaking so all I have to do is follow the recipe.   At least the first time. A recipe for sausage and pasta recently aired.   I limit pasta in my diet these days, but every once in a while I’ll indulge.   And this recipe looked so good I made a mental note to cook if for Terry, being certain he’d love it. Then a friend who’d suffered a serious illness was released from the hospital, and here was my opportunity to give this a try.    I doubled the recipe, filled a large casserole for my friend, then one for Terry, and had enough left just for me, me, me.   And it is superb! Four fork review from all who were treated to this dish. It's not real pretty but the rosemary spiced sausage makes me forget that. Serves 6 White mushrooms may be substituted f...
Read more