Once A Man, Twice A Child

I stepped out of it a long time ago.

I grew weary of it.

All the wrangling. All the taking sides. All the hard and harsh feelings. All the name-calling and accusations. All the never ending struggling for prominence and dominance in the Right versus Left, Liberal versus Conservative, Religious versus Anti-Religious. All the divisive inter-religious bickering and all the finger-pointing issues that seemingly have no end. All the constantly having my innards in a turmoil. All of the doping frenzy fueling frenzy that keeps people emotionally intoxicated and stirred up.

I concluded that there is pitifully little that I can do about any of it. So why let the mess consume me and keep constantly wrecking my personal peace and serenity?

The conclusion was liberating and life-changing.

It was, thinking back to those earlier years, the generous spans of interest, time, and involvement that I invested in studying several Eastern and Western monastic traditions that began moving me out of the frenetic fray. Their practice of disassociation from the events of the world allowed them to more fully embrace and focus more intently and objectively on life and its most essential elements.

I still cling tightly to several of the monastic puzzle pieces. This particular disassociation piece is a jewel to never be parted with.

It was this piece of the puzzle that helped me rediscover and reconnect with that almost lost interior part of me that was, as a child and youth, cultivated and groomed by the familiar woods, creeks, overgrown fencerows, and meandering cow paths where I spent enormous amounts of time during my formative years. This piece of me, like the jewel mentioned above, is a piece that will never be parted with now that it has been rediscovered and reclaimed from beneath the assorted layers of life that kept it hidden for so much of my adult life.

I am approaching my 65^th Birthday. I am, at this point in my trip from start to finish, simply an older version of that young kid and I am still out roaming the woods, creeks, and other natural wild places that feed my sense of peace and serenity.

There is something that my mom would say of my dad once his mind began to go.

“Once a man, twice a child.”

I watched the development of his senility. It was sad to watch.

I think the sadder thing to watch, particularly in retrospect and now that I have joined the ranks of the Retirement Club, was all the years he spent from the time he quit farming and up to the time the senility began to take him.

He did very little.

He did not know what to do with himself, so he became immobile. His days were spent eating and napping in his chair before turning in to sleep all night. That was his daily routine for close to two decades. Perhaps he never rediscovered and reconnected with his inner kid. Perhaps his formative years, as the last-born son of Czech immigrants, were so traumatic that he didn’t want to reconnect with his inner kid. I can surmise but I cannot say with any certainty what was going on in my dad’s head. He kept a closed latch on a lot of things.

I can say what is going on in my head, though, and one of them is that I have better things to do in retirement than waste away in a recliner waiting on senility to take my mind. There are entirely too many fun and interesting things for us two oldering kids to do.

Our miserable summer heat and humidity is about behind us and our Fall Camping Tour is about to begin. There are places to go, sights to see, backroads to travel, trails to blaze, and campfires to be kindled.

Where will we be off to first on our Fall Camping Tour?

We are thinking about Arkansas.

There are a lot of roads. 

Just pick one and go.