Goines On: Act like it

Click image for more vignettes

On the third night of trusting that he would awaken spryly the next morning, Goines had been a bit bolder than on the previous two nights, this time also affirming that the skin and muscles around his head would feel loose and relaxed. And the following morning he did feel significantly better than anticipated, as evidenced by the heightened vigor of his morning stretches. Goines’ body felt younger than usual, even vibrant.
    His head might even be feeling a bit less constricted – he wasn’t sure. Maybe if he acted as if it did? Professional actors, after all, reported that they “became” the characters they played. He reasoned that not to act as if his head were feeling less constricted would be tacitly to contradict what he had affirmed the previous night.
    Goines used to affirm that he would wake up feeling as though it were a vacation day and he would be off to somewhere exciting, but vacations had lost their allure. Retirement was a sort of perpetual vacation, and he had grown accustomed to his daily routines, which he loved. But the main thing he did that was at all exciting was thinking, getting ideas, examining epiphanies when they came. Such thinking was dependent on a relatively vibrant body, however....
    Goines wondered whether acting as-if had anything to do with Jesus’ reported miraculous powers. When Jesus told that infirm man beside the pool to take up his bed and walk, the man would have flown in Jesus’ face if he had not done so. Goines concluded that it was rational to act as-if, and he determined to do so, and to do it in a more disciplined way.

Copyright © 2019 by Moristotle