You can blame what follows on me not getting a decent night’s sleep. But I did warn you at the outset that these musings would be egocentric.
Last night I went to sleep at about midnight. That is par for the course. Not because I have trouble getting to sleep, but because I have trouble leaving the iPad alone. It sleeps by my bedside, along with the iPhone. I am alone, after all, in a strange place.
Sometimes this arrangement has unfortunate consequences. At 1.15 am this morning the phone starts ringing. This is not the first time, and every time sets off the flight or fight response.
A heavily accented male caller is on the line.
Him, “Is this Linda Oh Really?”
Me, “Yes, who are you?” Mumble, mumble – he is indistinguishable from indistinguishable.
Him, “Do you want a secondary source of income?”
Me, “Where are you calling from?”
Him, “Canada. You must want a secondary source of income.”
Me, “Ok, you might want to rethink this call. I am in France. It is 1.15am.”
Him, “Oh, do you want to go to sleep?”
Me, “I was asleep.”
Him, “Oh, so you don’t want a secondary source of income?”
I hung up.
Now it is 1.20 am and I am wide awake. I get up and go to the toilet for want of something better to do. Then I snuggle down under covers, start to drift back off …
Loud incoming Messenger ping. First on iPad, ignore. Then on phone. Cannot ignore, it could be important. It is 1.50 pm in NZ (am in France) and daughter Amy has 10 minutes to spare at end of her lunch break. She has decided to update me about a family issue (not urgent or important) we had been discussing previously. We have a protracted text discussion covering a range of non-urgent or important topics. She goes back to work leaving me hanging mid-discussion. Needless to say I am thoroughly awake and dissecting the strands of our conversation. It has left me angry at one family member, and reminded me that I need to be in touch with another.
Try to sleep. No, that is not working. Start firing off text messages. One to Amy’s father in law, Jorge, in Cordoba, Argentina (it is only late evening there) sparks off another text conversation. Since he only speaks Spanish, and I only speak English and Franglais, this is slowed considerably as we mutually consult Google translate. However, we get quite a lot said just with the use of emojis. We are good friends after he and Nora stayed with me for two weeks just before I came to France, so it is good to catch up with him. But at 2.33 am I decide to call it a halt and tell him I have to go to sleep. He sends me the thumbs up emoji. I start to drift off … and 20 minutes later he sends it to me again.
Arghh … fall asleep about 3.30 am. Bladder wakes me at 5.05 am. Check emails, FaceBook etc. Put iPad aside eventually and go back to sleep …. ring, ring, ring … FaceTime. Johan figures I should be awake at 7.45 am. “Yes, yes, it’s ok. It is time to get up anyway.”
D’accord. Yoga, breakfast, usual sort of thing. I go for a long walk. Take some photos, buy Christmas presents for the people I have not already bought for, and on the way home I do a terrible thing. Each day while out walking I think about what to have for dinner, buying the necessaries on the final leg of the trip home. Today I thought I might roast a chicken, which will keep me going for a few dinners. But, BOTH my local butcher shops are shut between 12.30 and 4 pm. Check out today’s FaceBook post for my view on that situation. So I am forced to forage in the small supermarket on my corner instead.
The fresh meat offerings at Utile are limited. But they do have fresh chickens in the chiller. For over 15 years now I have never knowingly bought a chicken or eggs that are not labelled as free range. I bought a little chicken here from the boucherie a couple of weeks ago that was fermée in plein air, and only winced slightly when it cost me an eye-watering 20 Euros ( that is about $NZ34 folks). I figure it is worth it not to feel the guilt for the horrendous practices associated with battery farmed poultry, although I do not go so far as to refuse chicken of unknown origin that I do not prepare myself.
So there I am in Utile. Laden down with heavy bags of gifts and vegetables (the green grocer does not close for lunch!), tired and grumpy, and only five minutes walk from home and a nice cup of tea. Of course there are no free range chickens on sale. There are, instead, plump little, yellow fleshed, corn-fed chickens for only 5.95 Euros. I buy one, along with a can of sugar-free Red Bull (no bulls were harmed in the making of this product), and a bag to put them in. Then I stagger home under the weight of my purchases and my guilty conscience.
I am, however, going to eat that chicken regardless. I can smell it cooking right now. I am looking forward to it.
And so to the subject that inspired this reverie.
I was sitting at the dining table, enjoying my well-earned drink and flicking through advertising leaflets, when I started getting distracted by the apartment building across the roading. It is more functional than inspiring, but so many windows are shuttered that I find myself wondering about the lives of the people that live there. With almost no clues to go by, I think about the person who leaves shirts hanging by the window to dry – see top left in photo below – and the child in the room with the mobile in the window – 3rd column, 2nd row up.
It occurred to me that these neighbours of mine were probably doing nothing but get on with their day to day lives in the same way we all do. That is to say what most people do most of the time, which is work, eat and sleep. The same thing yesterday, today and tomorrow. When they are not working, eating or sleeping they will be seeking to entertain themselves, and again the sources of that entertainment are ordinary and common to most people – movies, shows, tv, sports, pubs and bars, dining out, social media. What do they/we look forward to? A holiday, family or seasonal celebration, a new born. What are they/we working towards? A job, education, buying a home, starting a family, retirement.
For most people by and large, day to day, there is really no expectation except of small pleasures. The balm of food, drink, tv, the internet, and less and less actual social engagement. And those are the lucky ones amongst us. For some all of the time, and for all some of the time, through bad luck or bad decisions, life is stressful, painful or unpleasant. It has me wondering again, as I did starting out in my early twenties, what is the point?
Back then, I remember vividly the feeling that I had strayed into forbidden territory when raising the pointless of simply striving for more and better of what we already had in the course of a family discussion. Not just my parents, but also my young husband, looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. I have never initiated such a discussion again. But of course it is the question we must all ask ourselves. Are we just here to grow old, with more or less belongings and physical comfort? What should we be asking of ourselves and others?
I am not a spiritual person. But I firmly believe, as Socrates told us, the unexamined life is not worth living. As an unbeliever, I am forced to examine my life and what I do with it from the point of view of logic and science and philosophy, although I have no expertise in any of those things. I do, however, have a very old-fashioned dictum that shapes my values – the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I like it as a working guide to life because it plays to our self interest rather than to pure altruism. If everyone followed this rule we would live harmoniously and this is surely in everyones’ best interests. It is not, however, a rule that helps one to decide ‘why’ we should keeping putting one foot in front of the other.
Nor is this a question I agonise over on a daily basis. Mostly, I know from experience, that both misery and ennui with life are passing phases, and that the momentary joy that breaks out from time to time is enough to keep me going. It is always the direction that is harder to determine. Entering my 7th decade, I am still trying to figure out what it is I am meant to do with my life. The people I envy most in life are the ones who know exactly what they want to do, and set out to do it. But there are very few of those.
I have stepped out of my life for a little while. Not to find some answers. No, there are none. Just to see what it is like.
