Saturday night thoughts

In The Curse of Chalion (which I will review here one of these days), Bujold says at one point, 'a young woman looking forwards and up not backwards and down'.   It is a characteristic of youth, or at least more fortunate youth, to look forward in the expectation of up.  But surely most ppl my age look back.  And down.

Friends who are gone, for whatever reason.  Failing health.  Things you always thought you would do, but didn't: take the number 1 tram in Budapest, for example; or visit the forests of Washington;  or see Venice; or climb Sneeukop one last time with someone you love.  Things you will now never do.  Failure.  Loss.  The realisation that love is transitory and ... not enough.  The awareness of your own arrogance and folly when you were young and the certainty (given your own experience of life) that you will surely be foolish and  make more mistakes before you die.

The greed and short-sightedness which ignore the inexorable logic of global warming, to postpone as long as possible the necessary and inevitable steps needed to fight it.

Yet such are the ironies of life that your horizons contract as you age, and what you need to make you happy is less.  That is not to say that I don't sometimes find myself staring into the distance filled with melancholy.  Of course I do; life is filled with grief and loss.  Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.  Yet as you look back and down there are simple, ineffable, pleasures: a bowl of home-made mushroom soup.  Music.  The deep love which grows between partners in a marriage.  Family.  The first hope-filled creamy green spikes of the daffodils, knowing before we do that spring is on the way.  I am very conscious after recent health scares that I may not have much more time here.  Yet I am happy.  How odd.