Tonight it led me to reflect on the end of my mother’s life
– how I took hold of it single-handedly and tidied it up. I felt a brief sense
of a job well done, but then I asked myself whether it mattered. For whose
benefit did I do it? The system’s mostly, to avoid the inconvenience of having
loose ends floating around, cluttering up one tiny, relatively unimportant
corner of a complex social organism. It certainly wasn’t for my mother’s
benefit; her little life was over.
But this is a minor aside. The question is really all about
the road and its purpose. The majority of us engage with our road and its
individual structure of fine detail, but none of us knows why we do it. It’s
just there, and so we do. I seem to have reached a floating stage in which
there is no road, just a relentless drive to observe other people not observing
theirs. There seems something ironic and frustrating about that, but maybe
there’s a purpose to it. Is it part of some learning process, I wonder. How can
I know?
It brings me back to Mel’s complaint about the unfairness of
being thrown into life without a blueprint, and then expected to make sense
of it. Do we need to? Does any of it matter? If you’re inclined to reflect,
then reflect you will. But is that a good thing?
On a simpler note, there is one thing I still seem to be able
to connect with – the game of rugby and the annual Six Nations Championship. It’s
the only sport I get excited about these days. Not much of a tethering post,
but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
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