Eccentric Flower:199902/not doing just surviving
From Eccentric Flower
«February 1999 «Eccentric Flower
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nineteen february not doing (just surviving) I have been corresponding with a reader in Estonia. How I was found, I do not know. Mouth organ gets hits from the UAE every week, so there are less likely things. I confess to an embarrassment: I didn't realize this reader was female until this morning. She has a first name I have never encountered, and for some reason that name parsed as male to me. Which is one half of the reason this morning's message startled me so. The other half is in the message. I don't know her well enough to quote her without permission, and I apologize for the poor paraphrasing. She said it more elegantly. She says that her milestones were not milestones of action, but inaction. She did not tell her lover to get out of her bed at the correct time. Suddenly there was motherhood. She did not fight communism or refuse military training. Suddenly she found she had survived to see the breakup of the Soviet Union. She attributes her existence today not to the things she did, but the things she didn't do. Someone else told me yesterday that survival is the ultimate Darwinian measure of success, which of course it is. I hope my Estonian friend is not tremendously upset with me when I say that it seems to me to be a very empty success, just to survive. I read her messages and I see a life without a great deal of joy. I would not be able to live that life, I don't think. I don't know what I would have done, had I been born when and where she was. I might have killed myself. Not because of communism - because of the sheer amount of misery, fighting, and pain. Or maybe, growing up in it, I would never have noticed I was miserable, having no basis for comparison. Maybe I'd have done all right. But I'd have been substantially the worse for it, I think. I have a co-worker from Romania. She has been through a great deal in her life. Her country is a mess; she went back there recently (partly out of a sense of obligation) and when she came back she was the gloomiest I've ever seen her. She plays very hard. She is getting old yet she involves herself in more intense physical activity than I ever will - skiing, mountain climbing, et cetera. She is learning Japanese. She always has some new leisure activity to keep her busy. Her demeanor, when not playing, is so unrelentingly sad and cynical that I cannot help but think that with all this deliberate, forceful entertainment, she is trying to make up for lost time. To enjoy herself a lifetime's worth before she dies. I would not want to have to leave my own country in order to be able to laugh. Darwin be damned. Survival alone is not enough.
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