Keep Keeping


Dear Eugene,

This morning I wrote about ten years, counting backward.  Now the rain came and the night fell; I am going to write about the next ten.

What if someone is to tell me, Alex, I know exactly where you are heading.  You, being a middle-class man living in Vancouver, rainy but still one of the best places on earth, this is how your next ten years will unveil.

You have your job now.  It pays the bills and a few optional luxuries on the side.  The luxuries you will want to keep: vacations, eating-out, gadgets and interests and obsessions, all discretionarily necessary to keep you you.

That's it.  Two words makes a sentence, a subject and a predicate are all you need.  And the sentence of (the rest of) your life is: "You keep."

You fought hard all these past years to get to where you are.  Now the remains of your day is about keeping it.  (Let's not define the it in the last sentence.  Not relevant.)  You know you will need to lose some along the way.  So manage your risk.  Move up in anticipation of the inevitable coming-down.  Hedge your bets.  Exchange "keeping tips" with your friends.  Everybody agonizes over the same things: health and money and look, internet speed and Costco lineup--and the agonizing calls out the best of human ingenuity.  (We stopped ozone layer depletion and someone smart will come up with a way to stop Global Warming soon enough.)  Keep looking for better ways to keep keeping.

You are gonna trash your health cos you know this is part of enjoying life.  Everything good tastes like crap and you know that.  You are going to push the envelope and pray for the postman to deliver.  Someone somewhere is responsible to fix you up.  You are a good tax-paying citizen of a great nation and that's the least you deserve: a supply of good pills and clean surgical knives.  Tomorrow is Friday and your colleagues are taking order for bubble-tea.  Go ahead, hand over that $6 like its is Emancipation Day.

You are a travel bug.  You are a foodie.  You are a church-going man, a loving father, a caring husband, a handy man, a sports fan, a photography enthusiast, a PhD, an Esq.  You jump you ski you back-flip.  Stick to what you know best and live up to the name the label the brand the seal on your forehead.  These are the things you will be eulogized for, so make it a list not too sparse or humdrum.

If God is good to you (and by the look of it so far I think there's no reason to doubt) you will get to take a picture in the year 2029 and put it beside one from 2019 to brag about your good keeping (or call that "faith" if you brag in church).  You will declare on Facebook, even without words--especially without words--that it was ten years well lived.  You came, you saw, you kept.

If there is a hell of anxiety, constant panic welling up in you over the many impending imminent inevitable losings, no one can tell from the look of you, not the you in 2019, not the you in 2029.  In fact, even the framed picture at your funeral have you smiling your best, full frontal happiness undeniable, a legacy well kept to the end.

What if, Eugene, someone is to tell me that, that this is how the rest of my life will go?

A while ago my son told me he worries about the housing market and looks forward to retirement.  I guess everybody is a prophet of homogeneous destiny this part of town.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. RoseJanuary 18, 2019 at 11:29 AM

    Sadly to say, most Christians believe and keep the same – find security in our own identity instead in Christ. No wonder the world ignores the majority of us. I’ve been reminded again of Jesus’ saying.
    Matthew 10:39, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."
    (Matthew 16:24-26) Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me….

    As Christ followers, we must be transformed (Romans 12:2). I often ask what does this look like. I like the image of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. It almost seems like the caterpillar knows that it sucks to craw on its belly every day and can only go a minimal distance in its life span. One day, it realizes it needs a change, stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and spins itself a silky cocoon. In order to transform, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues (can’t die more than this). Once a caterpillar has disintegrated all of its tissues except for the imaginal discs, the discs form the wings, antennae and all the other features of an adult butterfly. I would then imagine the butterfly saying "A life worth living!"

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