I lead a mindless life

Not having the privilege or the capacity to read others’ minds, I wonder if there are any out there like mine.  I’m fairly well read, and my readings, most of them fiction, lead me to believe that many children and adolescents actively think about their lives. I really don’t think I ever did that. Though as a child I was happy, content, and felt secure, sometimes I think I led a mindless life. It was many decades ago, but I think I’d surely have had an inkling, somewhere later in my life, that I thought about my parents situation, about any of my relatives, about where I lived, my schools, my teachers, or about what I wanted to do when I grew up.

I never felt “depraved on account I’m deprived.”  Ha! I even remember when funds were scarce and my Mom couldn’t get new gym sneakers for me, she darned the holes in the old ones with maroon thread - my school colors, maroon-and-white-dynamite! I thought it was great, and I think I started a minor fad.

Sometimes I think I lead a fairly mindless, passive life even now. A dear friend recently recommended I have a look at two blogs Winter with Zoe and Green Elephant, by Natalia Singer.  In Winter with Zoe, under “Why 108 days?” I read this: What I was looking for when I came home was the same thing I look for when I travel: moments when I am fully present, a quality of mindfulness in which I am happy to be where I am and can invest in this place and this chunk of time, however briefly, with my full powers of alertness and concentration.

It struck me that I don’t think I’ve ever invested a place or chunk of time with my full powers of alertness and concentration.  I know that my brother has done this.  He has what he calls “Kodak Moments” where he mindfully stops and recognizes that where he is, what he’s doing and seeing is special. I’ve done that only once that I remember, and that was when I was awed to be standing in front of Michelangelo’s tomb in the Santa Croce in Florence. 

The “thinking” times in my life were such rare occurrences that I really can remember them.  I do remember coming out of church one Christmas Day. I was absolutely appalled at the change in the language of the gospel, where baby Jesus was laid in a crib, not in a manger. It made me think of the change in the Beatitudes: “Happy are…”  The Happytudes, I called them. (I think this is my own coined word.  I googled it, just to check, and they kept sending in ‘habitude’ – completely different. My Spell Check doesn’t like it either.) Well good grief! The poor or the meek are not going to be happy, but the surely would be blessed.  And there’s even the change to the 23^rd psalm: why did they change it to verdant pastures?  Every child knows green, but it will be a while before they know verdant.  To me it was all change for change’s sake, and I was livid.  Leaving church, I ran into the aunt of one of my friends and I started to rant.  Poor lady, she probably still thinks I’m a nut.

I do remember sitting by the mail box holding the letter saying that I would not be going back to my college.  I felt I was getting a fine education in nothing useful, perhaps because I still didn’t know what I wanted to be. Perhaps I never thought too much about it, so I was opting out. Just a week later my ‘job’ did find me: a neighbor told my Mother of the opening at the bank, and I was in banking and computers until I retired.  See that? I didn’t even have to think about it.

I must have given thought to breaking off a marriage I almost made.  The banns had been announced, but something told me it was wrong. It dawned on me that I loved him, but I didn’t like him anymore.  I wrote a bit about this in my post on tipping – a thing he refused to do. Of course I must have given thought to the man I did marry: thirty-eight years later we’re still going strong.