Life Goes On

I am up and writing at this moment (four o'clock in the morning) because I can - because I must - write. I just had another LGO (Life Goes On) moment and I feel the need to record it, for what it's worth. You see, early yesterday morning I got a call from a friend to let me know about a meeting at 6pm that he wasn't sure I knew about. I was riding in the car, on my way to a VA meeting in Sandpoint, 45 miles away, and so when I got the call I hung up and dialed my wife to let her know about the meeting - one which I thought we would both like to attend. She thanked me, I hung up, thought about the meeting for a while, thinking we don't have plans for this evening but now we do, and continued on my way to Sandpoint.

The next thing that occurred relative to this meeting was that at a quarter to eight last night I looked at my wristwatch and said "Oh my God - we've missed that meeting!", and proceeded to wonder just how that could have happened. Now, in the light of the next day and pondering the situation, I can see the mechanics of my failure. I see that a) I was driving, an inopportune time to make a manual reminder to myself not to forget, and b) by calling my wife I gave myself an excuse if I needed to be reminded - someone else would carry the responsibility of reminding me. Bad thought now, worse yet, should have consciously set up my own reminder process then - but that's where this whole incident went wrong. Shouldda woulda couldda - the old SWC - 'swack' syndrome. I am reminded of incidents I witnessed years ago, when I was young and in my prime, seeing older folks doing what I just did, wondering at the time how those old folks could be so forgetful, people who at the time I witnessed I had no idea of what was going on in their lives. Well, now those old folks are me - and if I don't just get up and talk about this, other young folks will have no idea how, when 'life goes on' and they forget to do something, it will be possible to assess some of the mechanics of thought failure.

In retrospect, it would have been easy, had I recognized the potential to forget, easy for me at the first opportunity to stop, and make an entry in my phone (set an alarm for five to get ready for the six o'clock meeting), had I just thought along those lines - swack - I might not have been in the situation I found myself in at a quarter to eight last night. Now, I realize that I must call my friend, try to explain what happened, apologize to him, and ask to have him give me the details of the meeting I missed. I know that without being there, to participate, any ideas, impressions, insights, and knowledge that I possess were not provided to others, and depending on any importance associated with whatever I may have contributed, is lost. Being lost might be a tragedy, depending on the significance of what I may have been able to contribute.

Have I ever shared the importance of the word 'important'? Maybe not, but we use that word as though everyone knows and accepts what we say as it relates to something we all know and share: we all know if something is 'important', right? After all, that's important, too - to know what it means to be more or less 'important'. In my world, that word means:
- Importance. That is important which has a measure of impact on property.

Property? There are many types of property: real property, intellectual property, spiritual property, and other types, perhaps. So when we look at something as being important, we can measure the various contenders for our time, based on the relative impact that a thing has on the specific area of property involved. For example, paying taxes is important because failing to pay might cause a loss of money (a fine for late payment) or actual loss of the property itself - that is VERY important! Going to church? Impact on spiritual knowledge. The choice to go to school or play hooky weighs the importance of gaining intellectual knowledge versus the pleasure of not going, of having an alternative to one's intellectual property which, at the time, seems to be more important than the potential loss of knowledge. Everything we do in our lives represents choices in which we weigh the importance of the alternatives we choose.

You get the point, and all of this relates to my feeling about not being in attendance at the meeting I missed, an opportunity to gain awareness, gain knowledge, and perhaps contribute some of my own insights, all of which is lost.

This concludes my motivation for getting out of bed at 4 AM to record these thoughts - because I can, therefore I must and so the world goes on - Leggo. Important for me to get up and write this? Yes, because at five-fifteen this morning I have spent just a little over an hour recording my thoughts, and to me - it is important to know what I think, to weigh my shortcomings and to try to learn how to improve on making my choices. So, making good choices is important to me, and why I am writing this.