One Morning’s Musings
On Grumpiness
I’m grumpy. Not because it’s a gloriously brilliant summer morning, and a Saturday morning, no less.
Nor am I grumpy because my only commitment today that’s not self-induced is a visit to the local library’s huge used book sale.
I’m not even grumpy that I’m 76 and stare into the fuzzy face of my inevitable mortality within the next short decade or two. I’m quite comfortable with that.
Likewise, during a pleasant drive between the library and Walmart, I’m not grumpy because the driver of a high-end Mercedes thinks less of me because I drive a rather ordinary American car and I’m not breaking the speed law for his benefit. He rides my bumper and honks.Why? Because he’s entitled to privilege not granted to the rest of us? But apparently, he flies at an altitude above plebeian statutes and ordinary folk, even though I choose not do so.
No, that’s no reason to be grumpy, either. Nor the fact that my grocery cart pulls to the left this morning.
And as I leave Walmart, once more in my Jeep on this perfect Minnesota morning, need I be grumpy about another driver with good intentions who tried to migrate into my lane without looking so an officer of the law could enjoy a safe space on the highway to hand a motorist a ticket for a moving violation?
I slammed on my horn to keep the errant citizen from slamming into me. That put too much pressure on my not-quite-healed fractured right wrist, sending a blue-white lightning bolt directly into my frontal lobe. But that’s just one more trivial reminder of the increased fragility to which my geriatric self is now wed. Not a reason to be grumpy.
And no, I’m not grumpy because some perennial pain at my age is no longer completely manageable through diet, exercise, and modern pharmaceuticals, nor because I must now draw on my reserves of optimism to rise above such trivialities. Fortunately, I have nurtured such reserves of optimism for times like these.
The reason I am grumpy, you might fairly ask? Because after a rather long lifetime of experience & research employing my more-than-adequate critical thinking skills, I’ve arrived on the platform of a belief system held aloft by the engines of objectivity, observation, and tolerance.
Having arrived at this well-considered destination after many failed experiments and many more successful ones, my source of grumpiness tugs at the stout fabric in my cerebral cortex where I’ve woven this comfortable blanket of beliefs. I am confident they are justified, and as a result, I conclude the following on this gorgeous weekend morning….
I am grumpy because of the incessant shredding of the sacred tenets of these beliefs by thoughtless, careless, and reckless intolerance indifference that causes cruelty to others, to innocent animals, and to the only world available to sustain us all in the vastness of empty and inhospitable space. That is precisely why I’m grumpy this fine sunny Saturday.
Then I remembered. Life as a human is messy, as is our entire species. And my life is far less messy than most. That, my friends, is at the very heart of this grand cosmic comedy within which we were planted and are all connected.
So, I guess I’m not grumpy, after all. I guess I’ll just bloom where I was planted.
Happy Saturday morning, y’all!
Until next time,
Gene
