Today is Saturday, isn't it?
Speaking of memory, I spent about an hour this morning going through most of the rest of the boxes I brought home from the office. One of the items I found was my leather-binder collection of congratulatory letters written to me and presented on the occasion of my 25th anniversary at IBM (January 16, 1992), where I remained another five years.
I hadn't looked at them for twenty years. The comments that struck me the most were thanks for my cheerfulness, helping people, sharing everything, professionalism. They were, by and large, of the same sort I have received lately from my colleagues at the University. Very touching. But sad, too—not because I'm retired now and can't be cheerful or helpful or sharing or professional any more. I can still be all that, and I'm sure I will be, for though I may have become a bit cynical over the past few years (I think it's true), I'm basically who I am and can't change the fact that I'm cheerful, optimistic, helpful, etc.
But being reminded how much other people appreciate these things has made me more thoughtful, more aware of an excellent reason to be cheerful and so on. That is, aside from the immediate personal satisfaction I derive from it all.
Now, after my second retirement, I'm more aware than ever that what matters most is our present moments and what we do and who we are in each of them, one by one. I hugged my wife when I came in from the garage and told her so. I almost wept.
I've consigned all those letters of twenty years ago to the recycling bin (along with scores and scores of letters and postcards from a number of people—including school friends Jon Price, Chuck Smythe, Jim Carney, Bill Silveira, high school teachers Morris Knudsen, Lois Thompson, Al King, sisters Patsy, Flo, Anna, Mary, Mama, cousins Billy Charles Duvall, Lisa Duvall Carter, friends Thom Green, Lucia McKay, Harriet Mabbutt, Sverre Vik, Barry Wright, new Bulgarian relatives Veska & Jordan Ravnopolski, Milka K...as well as several other letter writers whose names didn't even dredge up a face at this point. It was such a walk down memory lane, it hurt after a while.
Two things are interesting to me about the cache of letters.
First, what were they doing in my office? I'm still thinking about that one. But I imagine that the answer will provide justification enough for letting go of them now.
Second, the letters were from roughly the same period, with its 25th Yale Class Reunion in June 1989, Youie Summer, its aftermath of Chronic Fatique Syndrome the following year, our son's marriage and departure for Bulgaria. At times, life has taken its toll of me, and it may be taking a toll now.
I reckon I'll find out.
Enjoyed reading this Uncle Mo !! I hope you are enjoying yourself and getting something great out of every day. We went to the river yesterday and enjoyed being there as always. Hope you 2 are enjoying your Sunday !
ReplyDeleteLove you (Smile )
Dawn
Thank you, dear Dawn. What river was that? Did you take any photographs?
DeleteAmazing the things we kept that, at the moment, we wanted to retain for the rest of our lives and now seem to be surplus paper just taking up valuable space.
ReplyDeleteYour comment helped me to see that I didn't want to keep the letters for the rest of my life. I now think that taking them to the office was a delaying tactic, just as my donating to the local friends of the library the other day the journals I'd also brought home in which my papers had been published ("Invoking the Muse of Technical Writing," "How a Computer Should Talk to People"....) was a way of putting another party between me and the rubbish heap, a way of evading responsibility, or of putting if off.
DeleteCongratulations on your retirement, Mo. May you have interesting times.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, I've enjoyed mine. However, I've done very few of the things I thought I'd do with the freedom, and this seems to be the case for most of us. Less reading, no writing, a lot more music, in my case.
Chuck, interesting concept, freedom, in this context or any other. (Have you read Sam Harris on Free Will?)
DeleteI do find reading difficult for some reason—my eyes, my restlessness, my drowsiness when I start to listen in bed, but writing seems to wake me up and engage me—in a sense keep me alive. And photography keeps me looking.
Only one person's letters were harder than yours to dispose of—my son's. In fact, I couldn't dispose of his. I saved them for later perusal, later dwelling.
I hadn't thought of it in the context of free will.
DeleteI was quite sure that I wanted to do some serious writing when I retired, and even took steps in that direction. In the end, though, I decided that everything I had to say had already been said better by someone else. I could have written about my favorite corners of wilderness, but that's classified information.
I thought I'd read a lot, too, and am interested to learn that you can't do it either. Restlessness, and a nasty habit of reading too much journalism have brought me low.
Thought I'd spend a lot more time in the wilderness. I have spent a little more, but find that the tyranny of the appointment calendar makes absences of more than a day or two hard to arrange.
Let's see...became a Chairman for a year to see what that was like. Didn't like it much. Spent a while as a climbing instructor redoux. Too old.
Wrote software for the Nature Conservancy for quite a while. It gave me the illusion of being useful, but ultimately I became obsolete - because computers bore my ass off.
Mostly, I've retired to music. Perhaps that should have been my first career?
I hope your writing works well for you. It sounds as if you may have the conviction for it. I'll be very interested to learn how you retire.
Haven't read Free Will. I'm still on Harris' mailing list, but he's annoyed me enough I don't always read his stuff. I have read Dennett and several others on free will, but ever go out the door whence I entered..
Chuck, I realized that you didn't use the word "freedom" originally in a free-will context, and my bringing free will into it was sort of off the wall. (I probably just wanted to bring Sam Harris into the conversation....)
DeleteI'm not sure how "serious" my own writing is. Admittedly not serious in any sense that I either have something original to say or some original way of saying it. For me, it's just a matter of my having long found the act of writing to be the keenest source of "spiritual" pleasure I've discovered. In the act of writing (including preliminary verbalizing before I sit down to record any words) I discover connections among things, felicities of form, tones, rhythms, harmonies that set my strings aquiver with an essential musical joy.
I just realized that, at least metaphorically in my case, we seem to have music in common, and that pleases me. (Note that I discovered the commonality in the act of writing.)
Please tell me, if you can remember, a way or two in which Sam Harris has annoyed you. I think I'm still too much under his spell to be very critical of him. It was his book, The End of Faith, after all, that tipped the scale for me and helped me recognize the place to which my own religious beliefs (rather, nonbeliefs) had brought me. The ensuing freedom (that is, from religion, from my religious doubts) has been one of my highest values, so I feel much obliged to Harris for his facilitation.
That accomplished, I went on to some of the most enjoyable reading I have done: Christopher Hitchens's god Is not Great (and The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Hitch-22 and Arguably), Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and other books, and books by Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Antonio R. Damasio—hmm, am I as unable to read as I let on? ("Last 50 Books Read")
Also, why are your "favorite corners of wilderness" "classified information"? What did you mean by that?
I suspect that my own spirit is much more "domestic" than yours (or than Al King's or John Muir's); I have sufficient "mystical transport" watching and listening to birds in my own back yard. Getting off into a forest or a ravine has never added much for me.
Note on the interchange between me and Chuck: We have moved it to a private conversation via email, in significant part because his "favorite wildernesses are 'classified' only because if they are publicized, everyone will come to see and they will no longer be wildernesses."
DeleteOh, Morris, I finally opened your blog and was I glad I did. What an interesting speech you wrote. I didn't know you saved all those things from your sisters. It was touching to read that you did. I want to congratulate you on your retirement also, and from what you write I believe you won't have many dull days. You are an entertaining writer, and I hope you will start e-mailing me more.
ReplyDeleteI love you, Patsy R.
Patsy,Glad you enjoy my writing, and I think, now that I'm a more relaxed retired guy, my writing is going to become more entertaining. At any rate, I've found myself putting in humorous comments in a way I wasn't aware of doing much before (for example, my comment about breaking out in a rash when I open the Book of Leviticus) . I feel freer, easier.
Delete