School Thoughts

I am home at the moment -- I came home at noon so that I could bring my mother to an arthritis treatment program in the afternoon. The program is a combination exercise and new-age program; it shows stretches and limberness exercises, and it ends with the classic new-age concepts: soft music, and instructions to breathe in...feel the air move in your lungs...feel the warmth of your heart. The program is held in what up to two years ago was a bustling one story school with about ten classrooms, a small auditorium, and a library. Now the entire building, or portions thereof, are available for event rental. Because the music was still going on when I got there, I wandered the halls a bit, looking into the barren classrooms, still with their Kindergarten and such signs, thinking about what it must have been like when the kids thronged through it. When you're a kid, those places always seem so big and mysterious; when you're older, you find yourself wondering why it was so awe-inspiring. I liked walking around in there, but it was also a little unsettling. Buildings like that are supposed to be populated.

It put me in mind of a phrase I heard some time ago, which I may have mentioned on occasion, to the effect that people yearn for eternal life who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I'm facing the likelihood that in three weeks, my job at this company will be over. I've already psychologicially withdrawn from it; not that it was all that captivating, but I find myself listening to discussions with the distanced attention that you give when you aren't affected by the discussion. I find that I get just a little irritated when I hear people making the usual jokes and worrying about the usual things. Hey, I'm losing my job here, I want to say, and I think, a little shame-facedly, of how I've reacted to hearing that other people were losing their jobs over the years. I was sorry for them, but in much the same abstracted way that I now listen to discussions. I've said, and its true, that I am in a very good position when it comes to having to leave; I (we) have a goodly amount of money saved, we have plans to maintain our financial future, and I have the strong likelihood of being offered a roughly equivilent job doing things I like to do. I do firmly believe that most people are not so fortunate, and though in my heart I grieve for myself, I try hard to think about them, too.

When I think about 'what am I going to do', I am little overwhelmed by the possibility of not working, possibly ever again. (I don't call being the greeter at WalMart, the magazine-wagon pusher at the hospital, or anything like that 'working'.) What will I do with myself all that time? I know that 'retired' (I have difficulty seeing myself that way) people occasionally complain that for all the time they have, they still don't have enough to do all that they want to. I think I know why that is, but even if I don't, I suspect that finding things to do won't be too much of a problem. Finding substantive things to do -- things that matter, things that are worth it, emotionally if not financially -- that may be more difficult. I've never thought of myself as 'defined' by what I do, but maybe, a little, I am. If so, then I think that my future happiness is going to be seriously affected by how I view what 'me' really is. Not a programmer, not even if I do some programming. A father, a husband, certainly. What else? Because there needs to be something else, I think, maybe even many other somethings, to keep me from going sterile and dull.

And thats what I thought about in school today.