The Halcyon Days

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. Sir Winston Churchill

Since retiring from active duty and the practice of dentistry four years ago, I have been at loose ends. Yes, I know I have Parkinson's Disease but I have worked at a job since I was 14 years old. Many different occupations took up my days: student, dental assistant, shipyard fitter's helper, teamster dock worker, warehouse manger for a sporting goods company, college student, dental student, Army dentist, private practice dentist, correctional dentist, and Public Health Service dentist. I always worked to earn my keep and my family's.

The past four years have been an adventure in self-discovery. The road has led to the depths of perdition and to the heights of glory. At these glorious heights on which I now stand, I have come to accept my situation. My worth is not determined by my paycheck, the number of patients I treat, or having a job, a place that requires me to be there each day. Henry David Thoreau said, "But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before." For what did I labor so hard and so long? Did I truly enjoy the pleasant experience of entering a maximum security prison each day, walk the deck of ship so hot that wooden sandels would have to be strapped onto my work boots just to keep my feet from being burned, or being called at 1130 pm to be at work at midnight at the truck line?

I think back on my life and recall those halcyon days of my youth. Care-free, long-lasting days that stretched out before me with limitless possibility. In those days, I was busy from sun-up to sundown and yet nothing seemed like work. Not that I did not have chores to do. But one could scarcely call them work. I played, rode in the back of pick-up trucks, went fishing, and attended school. It was a joyous, special time in my life in which I felt the ineffable possibilities of the world. This is my epiphany, that an idyllic existence suffused with the freedom of just being and of the possibilities of life. From the depths, I am at a zenith looking out on the future. The road will not be easy, often nebulous and desultory. Yet the evocative nature of the call to be, to live, to experience will carry me and lift me.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. Aristotle.

So I now am busy with life, trying new things, taking a nap if I need one, and laughing again. I carve wood, paint with watercolors and acrylics, still love fishing. When you see me sitting in the shade, being still, know that I am having the time of my life.

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves. Rudyard Kipling.