Wisdom from the Chocolate Factory

I'm creating chocolate molds again. Each time I do this I get the system more streamlined. It's satisfying to be able to tweak the process, and see tangible improvements. I'm glad that we weren't born with the ability to do everything perfectly--we'd miss out on too much of the satisfaction that comes from realizing we're better at something today than we were yesterday.

Duo Ubera

I've been reading a very good book sent to me by Mark M., of Hillsdale County fame, called Interior Freedom, by the French author Jacques Philippe. It's a short book filled with profound wisdom about attaining what seems so illusive to most of us.

I sit in my living room, late into the evening, reflecting on what I have read in the book, accompanied by the music of Giovanni Palestrina, with no light other than five candles. I'm in a contemplative mood and I keep thinking about a passage in the book that speaks to the freedom that comes from accepting those things which we would never have chosen. Philippe writes, "when we are adolescents our lives seem to stretch before us with a broad range of possibilities to choose from; but as time goes by, that range will get progressively narrower. We have to make choices, and the options we select reduce the number of possibilities left open." He writes about the modern notion of freedom, reflected in a desire to see life as a marketplace of infinite choices spread before us and points out the repercussions this brings to our lives. He points out that for so many of us today, we "put off making a final choice, because choice is perceived as a loss of freedom." The result? People who desire continual choices "don't dare decide and never actually live!" And then he writes these words that ring so true: "Yet life chooses for them anyway, since time passes inexorably."

Very few of us can look back on our lives and say that our lives are what we would have chosen them to be. Life chose for us, and we are now living as a result of time and its inexorable passing. In my life, there are so many issues which are things that I would never have chosen but they are my lot. I am no different than any other man in this regard, and if anyone is even an occasional reader of this blog, they will know that the one area in my life that I would not have chosen is to be an unmarried man at age 38.

I have attempted to come to terms with my single state. I work towards saying to God, "Thy will be done," but underlying that very prayer is the keen desire that God's will would be that I be married, and soon, and to one woman in particular. Then there are moments of fear and trepidation that perhaps God's will is for me to be single the rest of my life, and if that is the case, the only thing I can pray for is my daily bread. There is a constant stream of uncertainty that flows through my life and I realized tonight that what I desire more than anything is to simply know: to know if I will ever be married, with children, or if I will be single the rest of my life. This continual state of not knowing is a hard place to be.

As I sit here late in the evening tonight, reflecting on the words I have been reading, reflecting on a week of dates with two different women, reflecting on a week that was marked by seeing Meg again, hoping with the vain hope that only a man consumed with love can know, hoping that she would return to me after hearing me profess my undying and unfailing love to her again with all the eloquence I could muster, yet knowing beforehand what her answer would be, I realize that time has passed inexorably before me. And I have not chosen the path that I find myself on, yet it is my life.

Where is the freedom in this perpetual state of not knowing? I have often felt that my life would change if I could only know this: will I be married or single? To know that I will be married would allow me to wait with calm and steady patience; knowing that I will be single would allow me to steel my resolve and embrace the single life completely, without the constant bombardment of torturous hope that assails me every day. Sometimes I feel like C.S. Lewis in the Shadowlands, in the scene where he is reading in the library during the end of winter, and he says that he detests the "in between time," where it is neither winter or spring. I feel like I'm in a perpetual "in between time" and I want to know if it's going to be winter or spring. If I could but know what my future holds! But that is not our lot, and it has never been any man's lot. As Richard Russo has written, "Lives are like rivers. Eventually they go where they must, not where we want them to." Time passes inexorably.

So what are we to do? Tonight I am weary of the perpetual hope of knowing. What I have come to realize is that it doesn't matter where we are in our lives, we will always not know. We will not know what tomorrow brings, we will not know if we will suddenly become ill, or if our parents will die in a car crash on their way home from Italy. We will not know if our job will be there tomorrow, or if the ones we love will return our love. What we do know, and the only thing we can know, is that we are loved and cherished by God, and all that happens to us is for the betterment of our soul, as I learned from a blind Carthusian in the film Into Great Silence. This "in between time," then, is my lot now, because it is for the betterment of my soul.

Jacques Philippe writes these words, which I feel warrant much reflection:

It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!

May God help me to embrace the freedom that comes from accepting those things that I would not have wanted at any price.

(Go listen to Duo Ubera by Giovanni Palestrina. Do it. Now. Your life will be better for doing so.)

Could have been much worse!

The whole family got together today for a cookout to celebrate three birthdays that happen in April and May, Steve's, Jim's and mine. It's a rare Sunday afternoon where everyone's available, so we decided to take advantage of the situation. The weather couldn't have been better and we all had a great time.

My brother Jim noticed that I didn't have the new tag on my license plate and urged me to drive with extra caution on my way back home. I had forgotten to register and was grateful for the reminder.

Unfortunately, his words of caution were not heeded by me, and less than a minute after leaving my brother Dave's place I saw the tell tale lights flashing behind me.

Uh-oh.

I pulled over, my mind whirling, wondering how fast I had been going. I also realized that besides not having a current license plate, my registration and insurance were not in the car either, the result of a car cleaning session where I forgot to get the forms back into the car. I prepared for an ugly encounter.

When the officer walked up, I had my license at the ready and immediately pointed out that that my registration hadn't been renewed, and how my brother pointed that out today at our birthday shindig. I also explained my lack of registration and proof of insurance. She proceeded to tell me that I was speeding, and that I had blown right through a stop sign, and that I also had failed to use my turn signal. She asked me what I was up to, and I told her that I had just left a birthday gathering with the family and was just thinking about how enjoyable the day had been and wasn't being as mindful as I should have been. She asked if I had been drinking, and said that I had had a few beers much earlier in the day.

She walked back to her car, and I prepared for the worst, wondering first off how many infractions she would write a ticket for, and how much this little mistake would cost me. There was a small hope that she would be lenient, but I wasn't counting on it.

When she came back, she decided she would check to see if I was drunk by having my eyes follow her flash light. It was very bizarre, and I could tell that my eyes were twitching a couple of times, which is apparently what she was looking for. She told me that my eyes had twitched, but that it wasn't sufficiently bad for her to do anything more, though I assumed that she thought I was a bit buzzed, which was not the case. I thought for sure with that in the back of her mind, she'd maybe write me up for everything. She proceeded to recite the litany of things I had done wrong, and with each item I nodded in affirmation, acknowledging that I was duly aware that everything she said was true. When she was done, I said, "That's a bad driver, isn't it?" She answered, "That's a HORRIBLE driver!"

With that, she proceeded to let me off with a warning.

A Sucker's Born Everyday....

So tonight, on a cold, dreary, and drizzly spring evening, I found myself sitting here at home, minding my own business, when suddenly I heard someone pounding at the door. I almost didn’t go to answer it, since people rarely knock on my door unless they’re trying to sell me something, but I didn’t imagine that could be the case on such a dreary night and so I assumed it had to be one of the neighbors. It wasn’t, and instead it was a guy in his mid-fifties peddling frozen steaks. I kind of grimaced when I realized what was going on, but sometimes the nice guy in me gets the better of me, and so I didn’t protest as he went into his spiel, talking about the quality of his steaks. He opened up all the boxes, set them out on the wet concrete and went into a full blown sales pitch. It was a terribly awkward moment where I couldn’t help feeling that the person in front of me was doing one of the most humbling things anyone could be doing—what a way to make a living.

I decided of course that I wasn’t interested, but how do you interrupt a guy in the middle of his performance? He drove a hard bargain, and just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and it was all so tragically pathetic as he stood there in the rain begging me to make a deal. The price was getting to a point where I actually began to consider what he was saying seriously, but the whole time I was trying to calculate the actual cost of the meat, and how much I would pay for this at Costco. I didn’t have a firm grasp on the actual poundage of the meat, but only had the number of steaks, and it came to about $2.50 per steak, which I thought really wasn’t that bad.

Standing on the stoop of my house, with this man practically begging me to buy his wares I found my resolve wasting away. I finally took the plunge, which I swore I wouldn’t have. I wrote out the check, grabbed the box and brought it inside and was going to go weigh the meat on my scale to see what the per pound price was actually. On the side of the box, however, was clearly labeled the pounds.

Let’s put it this way: I don’t think I’ve ever paid this much for beef in my life, ever. And what the heck was I thinking? Just last week I was on a kick to save every penny, and not buy any groceries. I'm kicking myself right now.

What the heck happened? As Dave Ramsey is wont of saying, I just paid some stupid tax today.

The one good thing: guaranteed low carb foods for a couple of months.