Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Spending Time

My friend says, "I don't want to look back on my life and think, 'I wish I'd spent more time cleaning.'" She is so right. So instead of cleaning, she tortures herself with impossible love affairs.

The fallacy I think is that love affairs don't make for long or even short-term happiness. Being pulled in different directions just makes you miserable. Cleaning does make for, if not happiness, at least a kind of contentment. At least, it does for me.

Maybe the real truth is that all of life is about trying to find worthy outlets for one's energy. The life-force just keeps going, we all just keep on waking up and being hungry and walking around doing things - being alive, and the passage of time, just never stops. So it's all about finding something useful to do with that time. There are adrenaline-goals, and mundane defaults. And maybe, if we squint hard enough and keep trying even when we're tired, there's a little glimpse of something that's worthwhile and lasting and the stuff that makes for good memories.

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