The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. — David Foster Wallace
I’m oh so tempted to see in here the ruminating of someone who has stared dependency of some sort in the eye for a long time. And that works biographically for Mr. Wallace. He certainly stared at lots of stuff, until I guess he couldn’t stare anymore.
I’ll tell you something else — The Web feeds on aphorisms these days (including, incidentally, to a small degree, mine), enough to make me want to press a permanent power button and never look again. I appreciate wisdom as much as the next guy; I just have an unsettling feeling that, at least electronically, a lot of our interaction is starting to resemble a Hallmark card. Enough with the quoting, I say; tell me something about your day instead.
But here. We. Go. This is what I’ve been doing, what I do, what I try to do, what I think about doing, why I sometimes get this overwhelming sense of being freed by my efforts to focus on what’s going on, listen to my gut and my body and my family and just about everything.
It’s why I make notes of calories I’ve eaten and miles I’ve walked and things I really, really need to do. And maybe it comes from years of being oblivious, or maybe I’ve been taught how to do this, or maybe it’s just survival skills popping up in the mind of a middle-aged man who used to drink a lot and now doesn’t.
But, reading this, this morning, I thought yeah. This is what I meant the other day, talking about more bad news with Julie, when I told her my general sense of self these days I would describe as existential exuberance. I know where I am on the life cycle, I’m very much aware of random buses waiting for me to cross the street at the wrong time, I see consequences and results, and still when I wake up I want to get up.
And why, even though he should really being doing more of this for himself, when I make my son something to eat I get released just a little bit more. Here, eat, enjoy, I love you, and I’m now free to move around the country, thank you very much.
