Earlier in my blogging history, I looked around for some way to get as much forward motion as I could, now that my horsepower seemed to be declining.
The model I finally settled on was “intelligent four wheel drive.” (I-4) [1] I hope that’s still what it is called. The idea is that the car senses which wheel has the best traction and feeds more power to that one. I guess that “unintelligent four wheel drive” would sense when the traction of the vehicle is inadequate and would feed more power to all four wheels, even the ones that will have no notion at all of how to deal with it.

But we recently took a trip to Ireland that was a lot harder than it should have been. A lot of very good things happened on that trip, including seeing a good bit of Northern Ireland that we had never seen before. We saw a clock tower (the Albert Memorial) in Belfast that I will never forget. [2] We saw a lot of the west coast of Ireland that was rocky and gorgeous. But I was a little rocky myself on the trip and it gave me an occasion to reconsider the broader arc of my life.

I am beginning to think more analytically about some other things, not just how to keep moving forward efficiently. But what if I were to try to devise a system that was as good as I-4 but was oriented toward another goal—a goal, let’s say that presumed decline. Let’s say, just to pick an example, to pay more attention to reducing the amount of pain or discomfort I experience. Now, I discount those as part of the price of moving forward efficiently. But what would come next?

Three come to mind right away.. I can imagine choosing to continue moving “forward” in the same way and at the same speed I did when I was younger and just putting up with the increased failure rate. I think that’s respectable, but I don’t like failing as much as that, so I would not likely choose it.

Finally, I can think of living positively. All the goals in this section, no matter how they are phrased, should be understood to have the suffix, “current conditions being what they are.” I mean “positively” in an emotional sense mostly. Feeling good about what I am doing (an assessment) and feeling good while doing it (an experience).

I can think of prioritizing some aspect of the way I live. It ought to be the part that I understand to be “my part.” The language of choice here would be religious language for me, so I would say “what I am called to do.” And since I have been “called,” there is One Who Has Called. That changes my job, at least on the surface, from deciding to discerning.

In that oblique way, what I feel I have been called to do would take priority over other ways of using my time and my resources, particularly over those that are only enjoyable. That sounds resolute and Spartan, I suppose, but the fact is that I am not all that good at enjoying myself if that’s all I’m doing. If I am doing something I think is worthwhile, I can tell in a heartbeat whether I am also enjoying it or not. I much prefer to be enjoying it.

But “enjoying” all by itself has come hard to me. I remember a joke I used to hear when I was a kid. This was set in what was then called a “progressive school,” the principal practice of which was to allow the students to do whatever they wanted to do. The joke version I was familiar with has one of the kids complaining, “Mrs. Jones, do we HAVE to do whatever we want again today?”

I would be that kid, had my life turned out differently.

So there are three versions of the I-4 adapted to the downward part of the arc of my life. In the first, I just keep doing what I am doing for as long as I can and just accept the increased failure rate. That’s not the worst version of a future I have ever heard. In the second, I emphasize accepting the new changes, all negative changes from the standpoint of performance, with a positive attitude and enjoying each new change for all it’s worth. In the third, I give priority to some notion of what my life is about and scavenge spare parts from other parts of my life to feed that part.

I’m just beginning the stage of weighing the possibilities, so I’m not asking for a great deal. Very likely, I’ll proceed haphazardly on all fronts at the same time and do more of whatever I think is working best.

[1] It’s a personal shortcut. I just got tired of writing the whole thing out. I realize that it means something entirely different to the Florida Department of Transportation, but I don’t care a great deal.
[2] It has begun to lean a little and some wit observed that the tower now has both the time and the inclination.