Sunday, July 25, 2010

There is no Santa Claus

After having fairly normal and productive days (well, productive by my standard) Friday and Saturday, I fell back into summertime slothfulness today. I didn't get out of bed until 2:30 pm. I took a shower, then went to an Italian place for lunch. Later, in the early evening, NurseK and I went to a Irish pub kind of place for dinner.

Somewhere in the day, I made it by Target to pick up some Q-Tips and a couple of T-shirts. But I spent most of the day in bed.

I was never a person of ambitious, far-reaching goals, but I've come to realize that even the miniscule goals I had for myself were pretty much pointless.

So, some days I don't feel like getting out of bed, nor do I see any reason why I should.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about people who are just sitting around, waiting to die.

That phrase was used by a woman I knew who was herself busy every minute of every day. She was a surgeon who, in addition to her medical career, raced cars, rode and maintained a decrepit old motorcycle, raised three pigs and some dogs and cats, and, in what time she had left over, skated in the roller derby. Seriously. I know that sounds like a character in a TV show, but there she was.

I don't begrudge anyone their hobbies and extracurricular activities. But this stuff is, to my mind, staying busy to stay busy. It's keeping ourselves occupied so we don't have to recognize the fundamental non-existence of all the stuff floating around in our heads – illusions which we have chosen to treat as reality.

It's liberating to realize all this stuff is just illusion. But in a way, it's also disappointing. It's like when I learned there wasn't really a Santa Claus. I wouldn't want to have spent my whole life believing there was a Santa Claus when there wasn't, but it was still sort of a letdown to find it out.

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