No (unless you count being highly surprised at the difference in price of Epson printer ink cartridges depending on where you buy them. £45-£81 is pretty astonishing, but not sufficiently astonishing to rant about.)
Then again, one little discovery I made today did make me think a bit. I was reading an old blog post I made nine years ago this very month, and a person who was of substantial significance to me back then left a comment which said, among other things:
Just know that I still think highly of you, and that when I feel alone and like a speck of nothing in an under/overwhelming universe I remember that I knew you and I feel less alone.
You’d think that such a statement would have boosted my ego, wouldn’t you? Well, it didn’t. On the contrary, it produced vague feelings of guilt and embarrassment because I simply don’t deserve it. I’m a harsh critic, you see. I’ve always been given to observing myself just as much as I observe others and the world around me. I know my faults and my failings. I remember the times when I chose the easy road rather than the harder one. I’m aware of the distress I caused others in the pursuit of self-interest. I’m sure I could have been a better person and more deserving of approbation if only I’d put more thought and effort into my actions instead of following my passions and being generally lazy.
But maybe it doesn’t matter in the grander scheme of things. The world has room for only a few Mahatma Gandhis, Nelson Mandelas, and Martin Luther Kings. And maybe life is only a stage for the enacting of dramas anyway, whether to any purpose or not we have no way of knowing. And that’s how I live with my faults.
This year’s 13th August has only half an hour to run. I wonder whether there will be any more.
* * *
Tonight’s twilight was one of those in I which I feel the urge to linger outside engrossed in a rare sense of wholesomeness. And a bat flew to within a foot of my face. That was nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment