The beginning of the New Year is a natural point to reflect and project. By “New Year’s Resolutions” I am less interested in determinations to get more exercise or start bathing more than once a month than in asking, Where are you? What are you thinking about?
I’ll go first.
There has been some talk of retirement lately. It’s a shock for someone like myself, entering the proverbial Third Act of the Play, to realize that is a possibility for me as well. I have been an upright citizen, doing what is required, and the result is I have choices that many do not. So where do I go from here? I have always suffered from a metaphorical kind of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and one result is that I crave order and regularity, the very qualities I naturally lack. Currently I have a place to be, people to be there with whom I enjoy very much, and a useful and rewarding task. What comes next? I look back at long periods in my life when I led a hermit-like existence. Building relationships is not a talent I possess although the older I get its importance is clear. I don’t think I would ever become another Howard Hughes, letting my fingernails grow while stuffing the windows with aluminum foil, but there are other kinds of solitude. The answer I suppose is not to look at the Change as a matter of emptying my life but of filling it with something else. But what will that be?
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I suppose one of the requirements of democracy is a certain faith in the fundamental wisdom of the people. I confess to have lost my faith in that wisdom. To be where we are in 2025 seems – at least to me – to mean that something is fundamentally broken in our society. I don’t know how to respond. Do I spend the next four years fretting about things over which I have no control? Or do I spend it hunkered down, “tending my roses”, as the saying goes? Does it really matter? I admit to a strain of cynicism (and the strain of frustrated idealism that accompanies such). I expected eventually everything would go to crap. I was just hoping that it would only begin a couple o’ three decades from now. How terrible to grow old in a time of trouble!
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I suppose I have the natural concerns of anyone who at least tries to look an inch beyond their nose. I possess no special insights. No penetrating vision. Is there any comfort to be had in realizing that everyone on their own journey has or will stand at this very spot? I don’t really know why I even posted this. Mainly as an invitation I guess.
What are you thinking about friends?
Stephen, I love what you just wrote.
As chaplain of a small chapter of an organization I belonged to for many years, it was required that I be a part of the funeral services for our members. Though having known them for many years, I would learn each time that I hadn’t really known any of them though we were together at least once a month. Their families would tell stories that made me long to have known them better.
Your sharing you with us is what I’m alluding to. It’s difficult to know one another unless we share who we are.
Perhaps now that you have started it off, others will feel free to tell where they are at this beginning of 2025.
As for me, I’m almost finished with a book Professor Ehrman recommended on the blog that Sarah told him about. In fact, he said he is thinking about sharing some of it with us on the blog. It’s Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, about living more fully. I plan to take advantage of more opportunities that crop up this year.
I’m trying to learn Greek as something to read. (Active voice.)
ΓΡΑΦΩ γραφω
Verb:1st person, singular, aorist, passive voice, subjunctive mood.
ΓΡΑΦΗΣ γραφης
Verb:2nd person, singular, aorist, passive voice, subjunctive mood.
Noun:Genetive case, singular,feminine.
ΓΡΑΦΗ γραφη
Verb:3rd person ect.
Noun:Dative case, ect.
Reason: to prevent dementia
Pretty sure I already have it (Parkinson dementia) and I’m only 42. Please, no sympathy. I’m just a voice of a village idiot taught by a common man.
I suppose in general, at this moment in my life, I continue to feel generally unmoored–in all the most important ways.
I really don’t know what my philosophical commitments are, and there are times I don’t see why I should much care about my philosophical commitments–but I can’t just not care altogether because I’m not that sort of person.
Like you, making and maintaining friendships has never been a particular gift. I’m getting to the point in life that I am envious of my highschool friends who didn’t move out of the little town they grew up in, who kept hanging out with each other as they aged and had kids, and now enjoy many old friendships–the kind you don’t get a chance to replace. I was the rolling stone and I gathered no moss.
I suppose one of the requirements of democracy is a certain faith in the fundamental wisdom of the people. I confess to have lost my faith in that wisdom. To be where we are in 2025 seems – at least to me – to mean that something is fundamentally broken in our society.
In my younger, more reactionary years, I was very pessimistic about democracy as a form of government for just that reason. People are not, on the whole, knowledgeable and discriminating, and they are not, on the whole, particularly virtuous. Aristotle, if I recall, says that democracy tends towards mediocrity: It will never be as bad as an outright tyranny, but it will never achieve the greatness of a well run kingdom. I still think all that is right, and I remain just as cynical about us as a species, but I have come to value the stable mediocrity of the republic. It is the worst form of government yet devised, excepting all the others. It is easy to look at our state and see all the bad things, the abject failures and the ways it should be better, while taking for granted all the things that it manages to do reasonably well.
I do think our society is broken and polarized, it is getting worse, and this is–naturally–shaking the stability of our republic. But perspective is important. “O tempora! O mores!” is hardly a new lament. In the sweep of human history we are doing alright, even as royally screwed up as we are. At least for the moment, the center still holds.
The answer I suppose is not to look at the Change as a matter of emptying my life but of filling it with something else. But what will that be?
An excellent way of putting it. Fill it with the things that give you the greatest joy.
For me, besides family and a few close friends, this has always been reading, music, travel, and languages. I’d like my final act to be full and overflowing with all of them.
Last night we returned from a trip to Prague. The ** you do not have permission to see this link ** is incredibly moving. As I walked through the Kafka House and read quotes from his works, it was like being stabbed by truth. It’s time to revisit Kafka’s writings. A concert we attended included the works of Dvořák and Smetana, and I’d like to explore both of these composers’ works much more fully.
I’ve been enjoying learning Modern Hebrew and would like to think I’ll be able to spend a semester in Israel at some point down the road. I’ve also been working a little on Biblical Hebrew, which in the next six months I’d like to begin focusing on nearly exclusively. Whether I’ll ever be able to have the ability to read the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and Lamentations in the original is an open question, but I can die trying.
I feel fortunate to be in a good place in my life, but there have always been difficulties along the way, and I have no doubt there will be more in the years to come. As always, Ecclesiastes speaks (Eccl. 11:7-8).
In the sweep of human history we are doing alright, even as royally screwed up as we are. At least for the moment, the center still holds.
I think this is true. I still have hope.
“In the sweep of human history…”
It is a better world than the one I grew up in.
The racial situation is better. My grandmother would have been incensed if an African American did not stand aside on a sidewalk as she walked by. Justice for all is better. When my father retired, he thought he might want to attend certain trials at our town’s courthouse but the unfairness of verdicts based on color made that something he could not stomach. Unmarried pregnant girls no longer bring disgrace upon their families. (Back then this depended on how wealthy the family was. Abortions took care of the problem for some.) Intermarriage isn’t outlawed. Southern girls like me can now even marry a Yankee without recriminations!
“Even a Yankee?”
Would y’all believe that was the overriding thing when I became engaged? He was a division engineer with DuPont, his father the first eyes/ears/nose doctor for the Mary Hitchcock Clinic (Hanover, New Hampshire). His brother was a professor at The UMichigan. He was a likable man from a respectable family BUT…
A neighbor’s daughter married someone Jewish from NYC. “She had made her bed and was going to have to lie in it.”
Judith wants us to talk about ourselves. Well I’m in an unusual mood so here goes.
Right before the holidays (wonderful timing!) my dentist discovered a lesion on my upper left palate behind a loose tooth. I didn’t tell anyone else because I didn’t want anyone to worry over me. (In retrospect a mistake since one shouldn’t carry such things alone no matter how noble we think we’re being.) I got the results of the biopsy this morning and it turned out to be benign – no cancer! I didn’t realize how much it had been weighing on me until I got the good lab result. I almost had to sit down and cry. I’ve spent the day wanting to hug strangers indiscriminately. Now that I’m relieved of that burden, a burden that tends to stop the world, I can now seriously think about the future.
I can’t really discuss my perceptions about current events without getting into specifics not relevant to this thread. So let me just say that I think things are about to get much worse than they have been. Time will tell. What worries me most is that dark forces in our society that have always existed but have been largely suppressed over recent decades are now being encouraged and made to think they have some active role to play.
In the end let no one say they didn’t know.
South Korea is pretty western in some respects, but still very not western in others. It still has some very strong traditional social norms–there is definitely room for culture shock–though I’m surprised that would go so far as beatings of strangers over things like hair length.
Thanks all for the kind words. It appears as if the loose tooth is agitating the tissue. Which means I have to have the tooth pulled. I’ve had the normal stuff over the years like fillings and a couple root canals but I was a kid when last I had a tooth pulled.
Whenever I am at the dentist I remember an episode from my childhood. My mother took me to have my teeth cleaned. I must have been 8 or 9. Old enough to know what was going on. It must have been pediatric day because the waiting room was full of very small kids with their mothers.
They called the first kid and after a few minutes there was the harsh sound of a drill, followed by a blood-curdling scream. I have never forgotten the looks on the faces of those kids, many of whom were still at lap-sitting age, and who could have scarcely understood what was happening. Welcome to the torture chamber! Now from the perspective of an adult I sympathize with the mothers who had to convince the kids that it was all for their good.
“Is it going to hurt, Mommy?”
“Yes, dear. But it is the good kind of hurt.”
Since I’ve been working in Georgia I’ve seen more TV than I have in ages. Some channel was streaming local live LA County weather coverage. Some of the feed looked like third-world war footage.
The cultural differences are interesting. In Georgia the local weather girls/women/persons are perky, buxom cheerleader types. In LA they’re pencil thin, pouty Botox lipped, dressed in what in Atlanta would be regarded as late-night cocktail dresses in mid-afternoon.
Gratuitous fashion statement:
Gentlemen, if you’re not going to wear a tie, for sweet Baby Jesus’ sake, ditch the sports/suit jacket! Either dress up or don’t. A jacket without a tie screams half-assed.
Gentlemen, if you’re not going to wear a tie, for sweet Baby Jesus’ sake, ditch the sports/suit jacket! Either dress up or don’t. A jacket without a tie screams half-assed.
Interesting take. Tweed jacket or sports coat, over a white dress shirt, with open collar has pretty much been my standard look when leaving the house for the last 10 years (aside from occasions when I actually need to dress up).
There was a time that I would sooner have gone without a jacket than a tie, but that is long past.
I don’t mind suits, hate ties, and love vests, but I can’t remember the last time I wore any of the aforementioned – it must be a decade or so.
Whenever I think about how we dress, I remember my summers studying in Northern Arizona where students and faculty alike wore t-shirts and shorts. One of the only exceptions was a student from Iceland who came every day to class immaculately dressed in a suit, tie, and vest. Everyone thought he was strange, but he was actually a really nice guy.
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