state of mind

[rinue]

I've gotten old, sitting in a rocking chair sharing old memories. It's not a retreat into the past - my present is surprisingly pleasant, and I'm not recalling a golden age. But I have a vantage point to evaluate what was important or interesting about my recollections of 30 years ago. I struggle to know what is important about right now, or how it will be received by a listener.

Advice about mindfulness or being in the present does not seem helpful at this moment (or for me most of the time). My answer for what I'd do if I knew I'd have one day left to live has always been about passing on important information to the people who would still be alive later, and not a helpful trick for figuring out my passions and pleasures. I don't know how to make choices without being able to guess at their possible effects; I heat the oven because I intend to put in a pie in it which I assume I will eat within a range of times.

Everything seems pointless at the moment - not pointless meaning meaningless, but pointless meaning not pointed. Not an arrow in a direction. Not a finite moment in a timeline, a point which I will move toward or away from.

I'm ok, and I'm pretty sure this is a space a lot of people are in, and also that people who are not in it are mostly in worse places emotionally. I'm mainly waiting it out, but am trying to feel more urgent about the need to turn in my taxes.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I hear you. I'm in much the same place. I don't get mindfulness—like, this is a moment I do not want to be in, it's a particularly not good moment, and what I need is hope for the future to not be this. Which is not something that I have. I feel like I've been waiting for a very long time.