Not yet fifty and single again - J

Afternoon

On the way back to the office, I drive slowly. I put some music from my USB on the car-stereo. Some nice new stuff I had gotten from my “date”. For a change not the local melodies, nor American rock or hip-hop. Although I must admit I like that as well. Instead jazzy rap in her native language, that I understand. The music is mellow while I follow the curves of the road that winds around the lake. The sun is still hot and bright but has passed its highest point, slowly returning towards the hills. Shadows start growing, covering the green hills with dark patches, starting in the deep valleys. I always wonder how these came to be there. Were these lands submerged before, an ocean bed? Was it violently pushed upwards by the earth’s powers, creating steep volcanic peaks?

Centuries of water and erosion created deep cuts that became smooth valleys. In the lake, bones of prehistoric fish have been found. They don’t live there anymore, but the bones tell the story of the land. We are just recent visitors. And yet, we manage to change all around us beyond recognition. What will they make of the remnants of our so-called civilizations a million years from now? Who will find them, if anybody or anything? What will they think of the metal skeletons of the high-rises and the remnants of roads curving through the landscape? Will car-wrecks still lie around to give indications of why these stone serpents lie dead in the landscape? Will they think their shapes and connections are some kind of effort to communicate with outer space? Would be nice to be around when they find it.  

These questions drift through my head, while driving in this warm afternoon. 
Then my mind returns to the talk with my friend, and what she had said at a point about not having enough time for being with her family, her children. Always busy, all these responsibilities. The last time she had been away for a holiday had been at least five years ago, she had told me. I had agreed with her, as myself I am sort of a workaholic. I had told her, that in the last years of marriage, it seemed I never had time to be with T, let alone time for holidays together, although travelling and finding new places was our joint pleasure. Always busy, she and I. 
After a short silence, she said to me, “J, time is something that you do have. We all have. Actually, we have plenty of it. It is what we receive at our birth. Time is all we are given, time for a life to be lived. So, I often wonder, why do we decide to trade it for other things, such as money… You do have time. I have time…But I choose not to use it for what I value most, but to trade it as a currency for…for what? Money for my family that I wish I saw more? Having time for after I retire? I am not judging you, nor myself or others”, she said, “but time is all we really have. But then we trade it and tell ourselves that it is all for a good purpose. And look at us now…I haven’t seen you in ages. I am sorry for that.”

This struck me as beautiful. I want to remember it. It made me realize that I had been stuck in a cycle, a system, for many years. I was so focussed on my work, my busy schedules. Although I considered myself to be free and not an office slave, I still had spent much too little time with my loved one, loved ones. Too often did I have to go elsewhere, stay elsewhere for long periods of time, just to earn a living. Or that is what I told myself... The little time we then had together was not enough to bridge the growing gaps in time, the holes in our shared experiences, creating ever bigger crevasses between us, making us drift ever further apart. We needed each other, she needed me. But instead I decided to focus on practical issues. She needed my arms, not my money…If I had only understood that and had been brave enough to say “fuck you” to the world, to my so called obligations, and stayed with her… Needing to earn money, to take care of her, of myself, our friends and family…it became a reason to continue to live a life in which I traded my time for … false security. Conformity to a system that makes us slaves without using physical chains, but which instead uses highly efficient and clean mental prisons. 

“I need to get a life!!!”, I shout out loud in the car, over the young man singing his jazzy tunes, I imagine to a beautiful girl, looking at him with dreamy eyes. “You got the time, took the time, to do this, make beautiful songs. Smart little shit…”. Am I jealous of him? Do I regret where my life has ended up? No. No regrets. But I did say one thing right, I need a life. Work is no compensation, even if it eases the pain of a broken dream, a broken heart.