The Best Laid Plans of Rodents and Primates

For years I worked toward retirement, and laid the plans out very carefully. I would finally be rewrded with a life of leisure, contemplation, and cooking. A modest but comfortable retirement would be the crown and capstone of everything I'd done, or so I thought.

But the trouble is things never go as we anticipate they will. Problems and contradictions we carry with us and ignore, sometimes for years, eventually bear fruit (we might be able to see these things coming were it not for the human capacity for denial), and new problems arise.

As a certain Very Large book says, "Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever rying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful...

"What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well..."

I certainly do wish people would act the way I expect them to.

So here I sit, on the verge of turning 62. The present is turbulent, the future uncertain, my finances fragile, inadequate and worrisome. And somehow I can't help feeling that this uncomfortable situation is the best thing that could have happened.

It just won't do to get too comfortable. It saps the creative juices. And what this jung man needs is a yob.