Thursday, September 24, 2015

Woo-hoo! and then...

Seems like a simple enough question, but how do you know that I haven't lived? How do you know that I regret my life choices? How do you know that my moodiness is not what gives me the greatest satisfaction? Why do you believe that your life, your life experiences, your life choices, your joie de vivre, is the only measure of a man's life?

There is, I believe, only one thing that matters when one looks back on their life: in the balance, were they happy or were they unhappy? There is nothing that says that happiness and great adventure are synonyms. There are many whom we would consider the dullest of the dull who are truly happy, satisfied with their lots in life, content to live out their lives in routine, with the occasional detour into uncharted territory.

There are those whose version of a life well lived is balls-to-the-walls madness, chaos and upheaval. They are the ones who are likely to arrive at the Pearly Gates, if it exists, shouting "Woo-hoo!", a drink in one hand a fat cigar in the other. But tell me, honestly, do you really see yourself as the woo-hoo! type? Few of us are and fewer still take kindly to the exhortations to inject a dose of madness in our lives.

I say this knowing full well that few of us live an even-keeled life; over the course of a lifetime, choices are made and these choices have impacts greater than we could anticipate. It is selfish for someone to look at someone else's life, when that other person is at a particular point in life, and conclude that their life is empty, devoid of life, colour or excitement. The Christian bible says in the First Epistle of St Paul to the Church in Corinth, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." Different stages in life demand different temperaments and different choices.


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