FRIDAY, 13 JUNE 2003
The question of the day: Do my ambitions surpass my financial capabilities? Answer: Not as long as I stay in Taiwan.
You move in the direction of making calculations. You say: Okay, I am this old, and I’ve done this and that. I own a toaster and a nice laundry basket. My health is here and there, and I have so many years to go before I strike forty, or fifty.
You also look at what you don’t have. You look at what you don’t own – maybe a house or a caravan, or a microwave oven; things that have always been out of your financial reach. And you look at what you haven’t done; things that are important for reasons only you can explain. This last point is the one I want to address for the moment.
The thing is, you get older by the year, and you start thinking about insurance for the day that will come sooner or later if you are … lucky. And the big question, which you try to evade until you realise you can’t ignore it any longer, is whether you at least enjoyed some of your life while you were looking for all the pieces of the puzzle, for all the answers, all the tags you wanted to hang around experiences, and incidents, and desires.
In answering this question one usually finds it almost impossible to lie – the truth tends to reflect even from under the darkest sunglasses.
I have chosen to hang the tag of “Things I Really Enjoy Doing” around travel experiences. The pleasure of arriving in a place for the first time and taking pictures of yourself in places you’ve previously only seen in movies or on CNN. It carries the type of weight I want to throw on the other end of the scale that age causes to lean so heavily to one side.
There are other things, but it mostly involves emotions that sometimes get out of hand. To have a family – to be married and have children … is a pleasant enough thought. But it’s something that will make this discussion much more complex, and that brings its own uncertainties.
Another thought sometimes infiltrates my grey matter despite noble resistance: Are the odds completely against us in this life? Or is life not about math and science? Is it, as I have been suspecting for several years, a struggle that you win as long as you remain standing?
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