chapter 21 - adventure

18/1/2022: No pain, no life, I told the guy at the shop where I bought my tobacco, and indeed, even the ancient teachings learn that suffering is an essential part of life, constituting our identity, and even may be seen as a challenge to build strength and resilience. In his case, it is a dislocated shoulder, but he keeps working, he said smiling. In my case, it is stiff legs, and my feet hurt. Also, more than in the past, I suffer from the cold, but with some effort, I get through it, and enjoy walking in the streets and park, meeting people, often resulting in short conversations, with strangers, as well as people that I vaguely know, usually ending with a friendly smile.

We have just finished another period of lock down, for more than a month. The dutch government was overly strict in my opinion, and the effect is dramatic, in the sense that it is hard to go out for a longer time, since it is not possible to find warm shelter with a coffee and some snacks, just to relax in a comfortable way. Also, the sport clubs and dojos are closed, which means no work for my wife, and no training for me, resulting in a significant reduction of social contacts and community life, as well as an increasing focus on domestic life, with all apparent opportunities for tension, and the risk of conflicts.

In the last year, our (small) apartment has been renovated, a significant change, motivated by my wife's desire to live in a clean, easy maintainable, house, and have what are now current luxuries at her disposal, a dish washer, electric cooking, and electric heating, inspired by the current trend of functional minimal design, that she intensively studied on her phone, by watching clips. I miss my tokens of identity, that we eliminated in the process of renovation, my punching bags, my old black guitar, posters with my favorite images, and even the dusty carpet, on which I used to do my exercises. The hard floor, however clean, is far less comfortable, also when I just sit and read. I adapted to this by keeping a strict regime of exercise, mostly taking the wall as my guru now, but it took quite an effort to get used to the space, and repeatedly I complained to her, that she had destroyed my space.

Another result of the renovation is that I did away with all my equipment, computer, big screen, tablet, and reduced myself to a simple chromebook. But after getting a new phone, recently, I started investing again in gadgets, in particular pens and tablets, for drawing and writing. the results of which, indeed, were posted on facebook. In effect, my addiction to posting got far worse over the last year, and is still lingering, although lessened by the set-up of a new online framework of sites.

Recently, we celebrated my wife's 42nd birthday, the number of the universe, and I will become 70 soon, both landmarks, in some way, and, yes, we are growing old. When she asked me to take a video of her blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, I mistook the red button for a recording sign, instead of a button to push to start recording. Stupid, she said, and repeated that three times. Stupid, you have no common sense. These remarks triggered a reaction in me that might easily be taken as aggression, but was actually an expression of being desperate, induced, as should be clear, also by the low mood due to the lock down, the isolation. After a few days of taking distance, we looked at each other, and, in a process of what might be called self-therapy, decided to manage ourselves better.

Using the 5 C's, I made clear that I do not care for compassion or care, but that I value and require connection, communication, and consistency, and would otherwise prefer to live apart. How would life be in my seventies? I was twenty in the seventies, and will live my seventies in the twenties of this centuries, as long as it lasts.

But having taken distance, and looking at both the past and the possible future, we both confessed or decided, for that matter, that we attach value to being and living together, with eachother, as a family, and continue our adventure, exploring life and the world, in both (creative) work and travel, together with the children. A rational choice, yes, but with deep emotional layers as its foundation. Now, let's see what the future will bring us!