The ending of a calendar year leads me to think that I should write something profound. Profundity doesn't lend itself to command, alas. Fredrik Backman, famous for his book A Man Called Ove, writes in a preface to his novella AND EVERY MORNING THE WAY HOME GETS LONGER, "It's about fear and love, and how they seem to go hand in hand most of the time. Most of all, it's about time. While we still have it."
Fear, love and time...now there's triumvirate that could be profound. How do we manage our fear and time and how do we keep love alive? Backman again "His grandpa is next to him and is incredibly old, of course, so old now that people have given up and no longer nag him to start acting like an adult. So old that it's too late to grow up. It's not so bad either, that age." P. 1. Ahh yes, perhaps I'm now old enough that I don't need to grow up. 😊
Eight decades are part of my memory bank and 2020 certainly ranks among the most interesting years of my experience. While so many have suffered so much, I've skated by, among the most fortunate. In his book Garner's Quotations, Dwight Garner has this "This is the life I've always wanted---social distancing without social disapproval." P. 11, Tom Stoppard, on the coronavirus, in The Spectator. On the same page of Quotations, "It's up to you to break the old circuits." Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa.
Perhaps I won't be breaking any circuits but I am looking forward to 2021, thinking about love, fear, time and new ideas. "Social distancing without social disapproval...." 😁
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Al
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