This past year has been very difficult for many folks, including myself.  I have had far too much time on my hands, and inside the house, due to Covid-quarantines and lock-downs.  I’ve spent many wasted hours just thinking, reflecting, and just generally navel-gazing on things that I can’t change or do much about.  While a little self-reflection is good, and can be productive, as the old saying goes “too much of a good thing often ceases to be a good thing”.  That’s where it left me. I became exhausted.

I have always leaned towards reflecting on the over and done past, and often become preoccupied even in the present with such useless questions as “why I am I here”, “what’s the purpose”,  and “is there really any big director out there to this ongoing live-action movie” that we all live in and participate.  I”m sure you have the answers to those unanswerable questions, but after a year of intense head-banging, I’m still as unsure and puzzled as ever.  A quandary it is indeed, or so it would seem.

However, this need not be.  Growing up, I was blessed with a great role model in just living in the present and taking it as it comes: my father, who has long ago passed.  I have thought of him often over this past coronavirus-infused year of panic and confusion, and wondered how this strange turn of events would have affected him.  After reflection, and more than a few much needed chuckles, not much, has been my overwhelming conclusion.  

Pop was always a man of deep thought, but simple tastes.  On one hand, he could recite Irish limericks and stories with the best of men, and could hold his own in a deep conversation about biblical archeology and its impact on theology with any of our Lutheran pastors.   On the other hand, he would watch Hee-Haw reruns and old John Wayne movies, repeatedly, as though it were the first time he were seeing them.  His was a life of deep contrast, but also deep contentment, I believe.

As a grown man, not much could faze him, as his life was one of constant change.  He was born in 1925, became a young boy and early teen in the midst of the Great Depression, signed up for World War II in 1943 after just turning 18, and after his honorable discharge, roamed the mountains of Washington, Oregon, and eventually, Northern California, where he settled and I was raised.  He often had little more than the gas in the truck tank, a bed roll, and his Browning sidearm, as he explored some of the roughest territory in the West, but through it all, he persevered, and, more importantly, thrived.

He was a self-educated amateur geologist, who had big dreams and big plans, but in reality in his heart of hearts just enjoyed exploring and searching for things in the great expanse of the American West.  His likes were many, and his dislikes were few.  If you were interesting to talk to, he would listen.  If you weren’t, he would mock you mercilessly.  He didn’t, and really didn’t want, to agree with you or want you to agree with him.  Conversation was important only for making life interesting. If it failed, he would tell you that you were droning on and on and his ears couldn’t take the monotony.

In my round-about way, this brings me back to this past Covid-year.  

While I have often been looking inward for things to be interested in, and spent countless hours pondering the big questions of life, he would have been looking outward.  I’m certain he would have spent much of his time observing the changes in people, and mocking the silliness of much of what he would have seen, what with all the panic, lock-downs, mask-issues, and general much ado about much we can’t control.  He would have taken covid for what it was, a serious illness, to be avoided for sure if possible,  but within reason.  He would not have let the fear of it change his fundamental being or outlook.  

His philosophy would have been as it always had been, live your day as you find it, find interesting conversation whenever and wherever you can, and don’t waste your time with knuckleheads, whether they be grandstanding politicians, self-appointed  neighbor virtue enforcers, or even just plain old run-of-the-mill busy-bodies.  The world will always be full of such people, and the world will endure them as it always has, and the earth will just keep turning until such nonsense-makers run out of steam, as they always do.  As his life has been testament, there will always be natural disasters, wars, illness and pestilence, and those who would capitalize on such things for their own perceived self-importance.  

Putting life on hold, listening to self-appointed “experts” on television, and looking for answers to the always have been and always will be unanswerable questions, like I spent much of my last year doing, is a general waste of one’s all-too precious time and energy.   Gradually over this last year, as the passage of time went on, and the exhaustion became overwhelming, I realized I had been doing this thing all wrong and should have been thinking all along how Pop would have handled it.  As the pandemic wore on, I began to fall back and rely on his good sense.  I ditched the daily all-is-doom news forecasts, picked up the guitar, started learning languages again, both passions from my youth, and yes, watched more than a few old Westerns and slap-stick old comedy shows.  Laughter is indeed the best medicine. 

As these changes gradually became more ingrained in my daily routine,  I have finally begun to emerge from my self-induced mental bunker, and have gradually begun to laugh more, be more interested in the present, and look outward without the veil of introspection clouding my vision.  What a refreshing change – and yes, I should have been doing it all along.  Pop would have called me a knucklehead from day one.  As he used to say, “My son he is, but bright he ain’t”, when I lost my good sense on occasion,

Pop had an old limerick that he used to say when things appeared, to other people, to be spiraling out of control.  He would say it at a county board meeting, church gathering, or to me when I would endlessly rant on things I clearly thought would nearly end the world as we knew it: “When in troubles, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”  

I know what you’re thinking – that advice won’t solve anything.  Well, knucklehead, that was the point.  Some things are not solvable with anything but time, and often, they are just passing events that will ultimately pass, however terrible they may seem at present.   So don’t waste your time arguing over them or overthinking them.  Get out, explore, and do, instead of the endless loop of thinking of doing.  Good advice then, good advice now.

Thanks, Pop.

Copyright 2021 by D.James Clark – All Rights Reserved.