Lex Anteinternet: A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

Lex Anteinternet: A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death...:

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

A really old friend of mine and I were talking about it just last week.

I had to catch up with him as he was working on something for me.  It was Friday, but I was fairly formally dressed and he noted it. The reason was that I had just come from my uncle's funeral earlier that day.  He extended his sympathies, but I noted that my uncle had lived a long and good life.  Not a life free of troubles, as no such thing existed, but a long life, that was well lived, and he'd remained sharp right up until the end.  His health had declined in recent years, but only in very recent ones.  It was the last few months that were rough.

My friend and I, who first knew each other as National Guardsmen back in the 80s, are co-religious.  Neither of us was married when we first met, but both of us have, and have seen our kids grow up since then.  And of course, we've seen our parents pass away, his before mine.  He has siblings, which I do not, and one of his brothers died, only in his 50s.  I noted that in the Middle Ages, people often prayed for good deaths, and he noted that a prayer group that he's in now does that every week.

Prayer for a Happy Death

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

I'm constantly amazed by people who work into old age, as I'd judge it, and keeping working.  A dear friend of mine, now in his 70s, noted that just the other day.  He doesn't have to, he just is.  Likewise, I know a collection of lawyers who fit that description.  The law is a hard job, surrounded by hard facts, hard people, and difficult scenarios

I think they just know nothing else, their real personalities, perhaps, burnt to the core eons ago.

In contrast, I'm also constantly amazed by those who have extensive plans for their retirements well before they can retire.  Another friend of mine fits this category, but when I look at him, I can tell his physical condition is so poor it'd be amazing if he lives long enough to retire.  It's one of those things where you don't know what to say.  If you were to be blunt, you'd say that the dreams of early retirement are probably forlorn, but that his dreams of retiring at all may be foreclosed by a bad early death, if some correction isn't made soon, and those corrections are harder to make once you are past your 30s.

The call came to my wife on Saturday.  I could tell from the tone what the topic was, without even being told.  A relative of hers was on his way to the hospital by helicopter.  Even though he was being sent in, in that fashion, I knew, but did not say it, that he'd not make it.  I'm not even sure if he wanted to.

And so another death.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

What I can't imagine myself doing is imagining that age and decline don't occur, and that I should be in court in my 70s.  I don't think that the lawyers who do that realize that younger lawyers don't admire that, and most of the lawyers I'm running into in court are younger than me now.  

And indeed, frankly, it isn't admirable.  People who work a hard non-existential job and keep at it into their advanced old age, or at least past their 7th decade, have just lost something they were when they were young, and much of that is themselves.  They've lost who they were.

AN ACT OF FAITH IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HOUR OF DEATH

From the works of St. Pompilio M. Pirrotti

On my journey toward eternity, dear Lord,

 

I am surrounded  by powerful enemies of my soul.

I live in fear and trembling,

especially at the thought of the hour of death,

on which my eternity will depend,

and of the fearful struggle that the devil will then have to wage against me,

knowing that little time is left for him to accomplish my eternal ruin.

I desire, therefore, O Lord,

to prepare myself for it from this hour,

by offering you now, in view of my last hour,

my profession of faith and love for you,

which is so effectual in repressing and rendering useless

all the crafty and wicked schemes of the enemy

and which I resolve to oppose to him at that moment of such grave consequence,

even though he should dare alone to attack with his deceits

the peace and tranquility of my spirit.

I N.N.,

in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity,

the blessed Virgin Mary,

my holy Guardian Angel

and the entire heavenly host,

affirm that I wish to live and die under the standard of the Holy Cross.

I firmly believe all that our Holy Mother,

the holy, catholic and apostolic Church,

believes and teaches.

It is my steadfast intention to die in this holy faith,

in which all the holy martyrs, confessors and virgins of Christ have died,

as well as all those who have saved their souls.

If the devil should tempt me to despair

because of the multitude and grievousness of my sins,

I affirm that from this day forth

I firmly hope in the infinite mercy of God,

which will not let itself be overcome by my sins,

and in the Precious Blood of Jesus

which has washed all my sins away.

If the devil should assail me with temptations to presumption

by reason of the small amount of good

which by the help of God

I may have been able to accomplish,

I confess from this day forth

that I deserve eternal separation from God

a thousand times by my sins

and I entrust myself entirely

to the infinite goodness of God,

through whose grace alone I am what I am.

Finally, if the evil spirit should suggest to me

that the pains inflicted upon me by our Lord

in that last hour of my life

are too heavy to bear,

I affirm now that all will be as nothing

in comparison with the punishments I have deserved throughout life.

In the bitterness of my soul

I call to remembrance all my years;

I see my iniquities, I confess them and detest them.

Ashamed and sorrowful I turn to you,

my God, my Creator and my Redeemer.

Forgive me, O Lord, by the multitude of your mercies;

forgive your servant whom you have redeemed by your Precious Blood.

My God, I turn to you, I call upon you, I trust in you;

 to your infinite goodness

I commit the entire reckoning of my life.

I have sinned greatly, O Lord:

 enter not into judgment with your servant,

who surrenders to you

and confesses his guilt.

Of myself I cannot make satisfaction to you for my countless sins:

I do not have the means to pay you for my infinite debt.

But your Son has shed his Blood for me,

and greater than all mine sins is your mercy.

O Jesus, be my Saviour!

At the hour of my fearful crossing to eternity

put to flight the enemy of my soul;

grant me grace to overcome every difficulty,

for you alone do mighty wonders.

Lord,

according to the multitude of your tender mercies

I shall enter into your dwelling place.

Trusting in your pity,

I commend my spirit into your hands!

May the Blessed Virgin Mary

and my Guardian Angel

accompany my soul into the heavenly country. Amen.

We should all hope and indeed pray for a happy death.  And perhaps we should pray for a happy life, which is one worthwhile.  That doesn't, quite frankly, include the "I'm going to work here at my desk until I die".  That's surrendering to fear or meaningless, in most cases.

Again, there are exceptions.  People with Existential Occupations, people who own their own special business, and the like.  The list can't really be set out in full.

That doesn't include pouring through the latest edition of the IRS code for deductions, or reading the Restatement (Second) of Torts, or engineering an oilfield implement. 

Lex Anteinternet: 2023. Annus horribilis and a Gift.

Lex Anteinternet: 2023. Annus horribilis and a Gift.: 

2023. Annus horribilis and a Gift.

Jimi Hendrix playing Room Full of Mirrors

At least by some measures, New Years are supposed to be periods of introspection.  If so, the annual arrival of New Year’s this year certainly has been for me.

2023, by which I really mean the period from October 2022 to the present, has been the worst year of my life, and that’s saying something.

Probably only people who know me really well would know that I’ve had, at least by western world standards, a rough life to some degree.  My teenage years and early (20s) adulthood was overshadowed by the physical and accompanying mental decline of my mother, something that still hangs over me like a dark cloud in a lot of ways.  It certainly sprung me from being a child at age 12 to an adult at age 13 virtually overnight, and not in ways that were good really, but in ways you can’t ever get back.  My relationship with my mother really didn’t recover in some ways until she was near death, and it never recovered in some ways.  I’m still working on that, trying to understand that what happened to her wasn’t her fault, or anyone else’s.

Added to that, the death of my father at age 62 was an irreparable loss to me that I’ve also never recovered from and won’t be able to.  As I noted here the other day, being an only child meant that I didn’t have a sibling to help endure this loss with, and when he died the person then closest to me in the world died, leaving me with an obligation to my mother that was a very heavy burden under the circumstances.

In short, things haven’t been always a treat.

But then, are they for anyone?

It may in fact be the case that everyone’s life is rough, to at least varying extents.  Maybe its best if you don’t even recognize that fact.

Anyhow, in October, 2022, as I’ve noted here before, I had colon surgery, following a colonoscopy that revealed a polyp too big to be removed in that process.  I really waited well beyond the age at which you should have your first colonoscopy, which was inexcusable on my part.  Had I gone in earlier (a lesson for everyone who might read this), the surgery would never have been necessary.  Ultimately the polyp proved to be precancerous, and was “as close to cancer as it can be without being cancer”.

I was 59 years old when I went in for that and that’s the very first instance of surgery, other than I suppose oral surgery to have a broken molar and the nearby wisdom tooth, taken out.  What I didn’t really grasp, but should have even due to the oral surgery, is that I wasn’t going to bounce back right away.  I expected to.  I didn’t even really expect to be out of work for more than a couple of days, in spite of everything that everyone told me.

Well, I’ve never fully recovered from the surgery and I’m not going to, that’s clear by now.  I notice it mostly in the mornings.  I just can’t eat.  Things make me sick, no matter what they are, as a rule.  The onset of late in life lactose intolerance has made that even worse.  For decades what I ate for breakfast was cereal with milk.  I can’t really eat that anymore.

So be it, but what really surprised me was the onset of really deep fatigue.  I was simply worn out from the surgery and it lingered for months.  I was tired like I never had been before in my life.

To compound it, when the diagnostic films were done for the colon surgery, a MRI was done all the way up to my neck which revealed I had a sizable polyp on my thyroid. The same surgeon recommended that the thyroid come out and seemed to look at the question as to what to do as almost absurd.  I was so surprised, and so beat up from the first surgery, that I went to my regular doctor for a second opinion.  He referred me to an endocrinologist. That doctor had no qualms at all about what needed to be done.  It needed out, the risk of cancer was so high, I was informed, that it was almost certainly cancer.

Great.

I ended up having a partial thyroidectomy in Denver.  I was extremely hesitant about the whole thing.

Well, the polyp turned out to be benign, which overjoyed the medicos but made me feel like I'd done something I could have avoided. After surgery, I hoped to avoid medication (I've never had daily medications), but wasn't lucky there either.

Since the thyroid surgery, and particularly at first, on a lot of days I've just been in a fog and tired all the time. It’s a difficult thing to describe, as it’s a feeling that’s internal.  I don’t think anyone else noticed it at all, but plowing through my days, and that’s what it felt like, I just didn't feel right.  I complained a lot about it to my wife, but in retrospect now I realize that if you complain a lot about certain topics, it become routine and won’t be paid too much attention to, particularly if there are no external manifestations that are obvious.

There were in fact external manifestations, but they weren’t obvious to anyone but me.  Normally, I look forward to the weekends and feel disappointed if I have to work on Saturdays, which I often must do.  I was so tired and dragged down, however, that I actually started to look forward to having to be in my office on Saturday.  I’d drag myself out, a little, to go fishing and hunting, but my feet felt leaden and I just wasn’t having the fun I normally did, the exception being when my kids were here.

I just went in for a follow-up and upon examination just recently. At that time the doctor asked me how I was doing and I reported what I was feeling and experiencing.  He gave me a physical examination.  I didn’t have bloodwork yet, as doing this on December 26 meant that I didn’t have the chance to get it done.  Based on the physical examination, they determined they needed to up my meds. “Everything will be fine”, I was told.

The bloodwork came back and showed everything to be just what it should be.  They immediately cancelled the doubling of the meds.

Long story short, what’s going on is post-surgery depression, a thing I didn't know even existed.

This is, apparently, particularly associated with thyroid surgeries, although most people don’t experience it. To just sort of note what’s out there, here’s a medical journal report on it:

Thyroid surgery is usually recommended for thyroid cancer and can be to remove one lobe of the thyroid (partial thyroidectomy) or to remove the entire thyroid (total thyroidectomy). Thyroidectomy may also be recommended for certain non-cancerous disorders including hyperthyroidism and large goiters. The results of a total thyroidectomy is hypothyroidism which requires lifelong treatment with a thyroid hormone pill. Several recent reports have highlighted a decrease in the quality of life and an increase in depression in some patients with hypothyroidism due to thyroid surgery. Therefore, the authors have examined if there is an association between thyroid surgery and a new onset of depression.

Great.

Apparently post-surgery depression is a thing with older adults anyhow, and I’m 60.  But to make it even niftier, depression is even more associated with colon surgery.  Another medical journal notes

The prevalence of anxiety, depression and PTSD appears to be high in patients who have undergone colorectal surgery. Younger patients and women are particularly at risk.

I don’t know the cause of all of this, and there could be a bunch of them that occur to me, some of which actually wouldn’t explain it in my case.  But being honest with myself, one of the things has to do with a family history and my early life.

Anxiety of a type is a condition which occurs on my mother’s side of my family.  Not everyone has it by any means, but some do and at least in one case, my maternal grandfather, it was really noticeable.  He was by all accounts an extremely intelligent man, but as a young man he suffered enormously from anxiety which kept him from building a career at an age, in that era in particular, a person normally did, and which in turn kept him from marrying at an age when people normally did.  My grandmother was his fiancé forever, and its actually a bit surprising that she waited for him, but then she had her own background haunting her, that being that she was highly educated and intelligent, but her own mother was not particularly fond of her, and was open about it.

Ultimately my grandfather found a career in real estate in Montreal, and did well until the Great Depression. When the Great Depression hit, and funds trailed off, he turned to drink, something that plagued him for years.  Remarkably, probably in the late 40s or early 50s, a Catholic Priest apparently told him to stop drinking and he did then and there, cold turkey.  Even more remarkably, my Grandmother suffered a miscarriage with what would have been her eighth child and went to a Priest, maybe the same one, and asked if she could stop performing the Marital Debt.  He said she could. That means that my grandfather, for the last ten or more years of his life, didn’t drink anymore, which is where he had taken refuge from stress, and also lived in a sexless marriage, which must have added enormously to his stress.  Amazingly, he seems to have actually pulled his act together, and lived out the balance of his life as a happy guy before dying at age 58.  His siblings, however, never got to where they trusted him and that ended up being taken out, after his death, on his widow and surviving children.

That’s an extreme example, of course, but there are a couple of others.  Something afflicted my mother, but nobody has a clue as to what it was.  She recovered from a condition pronounced to be terminal, and therefore the early diagnosis was either wrong, or her recovery was miraculous (which is what I think it was).  Her recovery, while real, was never complete, however.  As another example, one of my cousins on this side of the family, named after my mother, and one year older than me, was so conscious of anxiety being a factor in her makeup, she purposely chose a scientific lab career in order to avoid it.  In her early 60s, the impacts of this have not hit her, but she’s dying of cancer presently.

I know now that anxiety has impacted me my entire adult live, although largely unacknowledged by me.  I don’t recall it being a factor at all until I was an adult, but the trauma of what I went through as a teen probably didn't help, long term.  The first time I really experienced it was when I worried about going to basic training, but I got over it quickly when I was there.  After that, it became clear to me that I experienced travel anxiety, which is a condition that is something that uniquely occurs in some people.  It’s hard to explain.  Ironically, I've traveled in my adult life a huge amount, and generally like where I'm going, once I'm there.

It’s when I became a litigator that I really became conscious of anxiety, however.

Litigation is an extremely stressful career as it is.  Anxiety runs rampant in the field.  According to the ABA, for lawyers in general, a study revealed:

• 64 percent of lawyers report having anxiety.

• 28 percent lawyers suffered from depression

• 19 percent of lawyers had severe anxiety

• 11.4 percent of lawyers had suicidal thoughts in the previous year

And that’s just regular lawyers.

There have been study after study on this topic, and they all come about the same, with some coming out much worse.  I’ve seen one article that has dissed these findings, but just one.  My guess is that probably double these figures (except for the self reporting anxiety, which would amount to a statistical impossibility) would be the case for litigators.

Indeed, I’ve long noted that most litigators actually won’t try a case.  I have tried a lot of cases, and one of the reasons why is that I’ve always been conscious of the duty not to allow a person’s anxiety to keep them from dutifully fulfilling their duty to their client.  I”ve sometimes worried, in fact, that I might possibly try more cases than others in order to counter the fact that anxiety might be infusing my views, but I don't think that's the case.  Anyhow, anxiety in litigation is so bad, as noted, that a majority of litigators actually won’t try a case.  I've always just been aware that it was there, can impact how you think, and set it aside.

In other contexts, I’ve long seen the impact of anxiety working itself out in destructive ways in the legal field.  I’ve known lawyers who were drug addicts or alcoholics, or who engaged in other destructive life choices.  I’ve known two who quit practicing due to anxiety, one self-declaring that and the other just not being able to overcome an addiction to alcohol otherwise.  One really well respected plaintiff’s lawyer actually disappeared from his household and family for a couple of weeks until he was found in a hotel in another state where he’d gone on a profound days long bender.  Three I’ve been aware of just disappeared, two resurfacing in a seminary and one in the People’s Republic of China.

This all being the case, while I’ve been a successful lawyer, law probably wasn’t a field that I should have gone into.  One lawyer friend of mine from Germany, whom I remarked to on this, dismissed this, saying “you are an intellectual, your choice was to become a lawyer or a priest”, which is an interesting way of looking at it, but had I been smarter, I’d probably have chosen the path of my scientific cousin in order to avoid the stress.

It doesn't matter now.  Like the Hyman Roth character in Godfather II, "This is the business we've chosen".  And by and large, it worked out well.  Being honest with myself, I've been able to do a lot of interesting things, and have constantly learned new fields and topics, all the time.  If you are an autodidatic polymath, it's hard to imagine a field that would actually offer so much as the law.  And if you do like visiting obscure places, at least prior to COVID, it really allowed you to.

In saying all of this, what I’m saying now is that looking back on the past horrible year, I can look back decades and see the points at which the stress rose up and made me act in ways I never would have, although never in a professional sense. Each time, really, was a cry for help, but cries for help don’t really come through that way if they’re not posed that way. And sometimes, there is no existential help, you just need to pick up your pack and carry on.

This past year, however, with the fog of post-surgery depression setting in, I was really unaware of it.

I should have been, as I didn’t mentally feel right.  I did keep mentioning that “I feel slow”, but that means you feel slow.  The real warning was when I absolutely exploded on two partners who have been keeping a long running irritating argument going for years, permanently ending it.  It needed to end, but blowing up on them was the wrong thing to do, and in retrospect I’m amazed that I wasn’t told to take a hike.

In Catholic theology there’s something called “the problem of evil”, which boils down to “why does God allow bad things to happen”. There are various answers to that question, but a universal partial response is that God doesn’t allow something to occur if he cannot bring good out of it.  In our temporary lives that can be awfully hard to accept, but I believe it to be true.  In this instance, I can now in fact see this at work.  In a way, this allows me to go back, but clear minded, to the beginning of my career as I now approach its end, but to be a kinder, more thoughtful person, and a more grateful one.  I do believe that people can and do change if they wish to, and while it’s not as if I’m now going to become an Iron Man competitor, or something, I am in a way following a bit of the same path taken by a friend who was very bitter about his legal career, and openly so, but in the last few years has become very grateful for it.  I have a lot to be thankful for.

I also have the chance now to beat anxiety that was lurking there, rather than to sort of give into PTSD, which is basically what I have had in a way.  That condition, known as combat fatigue originally, or shell shock, has been determined to be much wider than originally thought, and the frequent comparisons of litigation to combat are pretty accurate.  But knowing what’s what is frankly more than half the battle.

Part of that also I think is following a bit of what Alcoholics Anonymous and other addition programs have in their “twelve steps”.  I’m not saying I need to join AA or NA, or something but rather the page AA took from the advice of a Catholic Priest, which is similar to what Jews do on Yom Kippur, is to apologize to people you’ve hurt.  I’ve done that with four people already, which is probably the set I needed to.  But beyond that, part of it is being more tolerant to the people and conditions we routinely encounter, something that is difficult in a judgmental profession like the law.  

So, in the end, I’m grateful to have an outside professional let me know what was going on, and that its connection to surgery, twice will remediate, and indeed already are.  But beyond that, I’m grateful for the door it opened and which I’m walking through to be more aware.

Pax vorbiscum.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Collapsed: 

Blog Mirror: Collapsed

Well worth reading:

Collapsed

You can see my reply there as well, which I've set out again here:

"Last year it would have not been a problem but this year I'm not in great shape due to family issues"

Me too, except it's my own health, starting with a surgery in October 2022, and another in August. Haven't really recovered, although I should have.

Maybe you never really do.

Anyhow, was walking out of the high country at a pretty good clip as a rainstorm came rolling in. Lost my footing on a rock, fell, rolled over, and cut myself pretty bad. Just me and the dog. No cell reception, and I've given up carrying my gmrs radio as there's nobody to call if I'm hunting alone.

Rolled over, wasn't damaged and hiked out bleeding. It hasn't been a great year.

Glad you were okay.

I don't mean to be hijacking somebody else's blog, but since October 2022 I haven't been myself.  I wrote previously on my surgery followed by a second surgery.  Since the first surgery, my digestive track hasn't recovered, and it's clear that it's not going to.  I'm sick every morning.  Not some mornings, every morning, save, oddly enough, for a few days I spent at trial where I couldn't afford to be.*  Most days I'm better off not eating any breakfast anymore, as it's just going to make me sick.  I was already developing an intolerance to milk, but now it's through the roof.  I can't even eat cereal with a little milk.  The stuff I'm used to eating in the morning, which was always a pretty light meal, is a no-go completely now.

And the second surgery resulted in a medication that I'm pretty sure isn't adjusted right, right now.  Everyone has told me how thyroid medication is supposed to make you feel great and give you energy. Well, that isn't working for me.  Researching it, there are a tiny minority of people who actually never feel good following a thyroid surgery and for whom the medications don't work to address that.  Given that almost no medication ever works well for me, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was me.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I really wish I'd foregone that surgery now and have borne the risk of cancer instead.  At age 60, and from a short-lived group, the risk probably was worth it.**

Worst of all, frankly, being sick all the time impacts your attitude in ways you can't really appreciate until it's obvious.  I've been there recently. Short-tempered and not having a good long term outlook.  At work the other day I blew up on two colleagues who have been running a really irritating religious debate for years, in the hallway, for what they conceive to be the entertainment of the unwilling listeners.  Our poor Mexican runner has to listen to this constantly, and I finally had enough and just exploded on them.  The point isn't that their juvenile behavior was okay, but that my reaction was so stout.***I shouldn't have done that, and that's just a minor example.

I usually look longingly forward to hunting season, but this year I've just not been too motivated after a certain point. Being tired has a lot to do with that.   And when you are like that, you are a pain to those around you, at least to some extent.  Some can see and appreciate that, others not so much.  It's hard to appreciate it yourself until something forces you to.  I looked forward to all summer to the season, and enjoyed deer hunting, but usually by now I've done a pile of duck hunting.  I've gone this year. . .twice. Every Saturday, the dog looks at me with confusion.  The funny thing is that all week long I still look forward to getting out, but when the weekend comes, I go down to work like old lawyers do, and when Sunday comes, well I haven't gone to Mass the night prior, so I get a late start doing whatever I'm going to do.

As noted above, not only am I tired, but I'm not in shape the way I usually am.  I've fallen so rarely out in the sticks that as a short person, I'm one of those people who were sort of goat like, climbing in terrain where hunters and fishermen wouldn't normally go and not worrying about it even though it was patently dangerous.  As a National Guardsmen, I recall once somebody remarking how me and another NCO were mysteriously able to negotiate difficult terrain at night, silently.  We were both avid hunters.  To take a fall, and a pretty bad one, on terrain that I'd been over a million times was a shock.

I was actually quite lucky at the time.  I was all alone, taking a path that I normally would not have, although as noted I've been on it many times before. There was a thunderstorm coming in.  I was carrying a loaded shotgun.  I fell, and, recalling the plf ***I learned so many years ago, rolled out of it, but not before I'd scrapped myself up pretty badly.  I wasn't sure at first if I'd broken anything.  I had my cell phone, as noted, but no reception, so I couldn't have called for help if I wanted to.  I usually carry a handheld GMRS radio, but I've quit recently as if I'm alone, who am I going to radio to?

Hors de combat, after it started to heal.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I can recall my father getting like this when he was almost the exact same age I am now.  He died two years later.  He seemed pretty old at the time, so I wasn't hugely surprised.  I guess it's like the Hendrix song, "You may wake up in the morning, just to find that you are dead".

Of course, he was gravely ill for months prior to that.  In retrospect, however, it all started for him with a colonoscopy, the same way that this has started for me.  I recall him remarking as he was in the hospital on how all of his mother's ailments were now visiting him.  She died, if I recall correctly, at 65.

In my mind, I always imagined that at some point after I had reached retirement age, which I have not yet, I'd retire to a life of full time outdoorsman.  Not too many people do that.  There may be a reason for that. Some of us are luckier as we age than others.

Oh well, nature has a way of waking you up and reminding you that some things need to be done.  Getting sick? Quite doing what you are doing, refocus, and soldier on.  Get a grip, reform, reform, and keep on keeping on, but mindful of errors and omissions.

Footnotes

*I've long noticed for some reason a person's system will suppress symptoms of almost any illness when you absolutely have to keep on, keeping on. Usually things come back with a vengeance, or at least fatigue, when the crisis has passed.

**This is not intended to be advice for anyone else, I'd note.

***Re the argument, the entire facility had grown extremely tired of it and the shutting them up was welcomed, save by one of the arguers, who may be permanently mad at me.  Showing my presently poor mental outlook, I don't care.  I'm tired of hearing minority religions insulted when some of the employees belong to them, and I'm tired of having my own faith routinely insulted, which I've endured now for decades.  And while I'm a serious if imperfect orthodox Catholic, I'm also tired of one of these individuals, who isn't that good at arguing, turning to religious topics no matter what is being discussed, to include my assistant simply taking her shoes off in her office the other day, which would not normally lead to a Biblical discussion, but of course did.

I've also had it with somebody thinking that mocking the Spanish language is funny in front of somebody who's an immigrant.

***Parachute Landing Fall.  I learned this, oddly enough, while I was a CAP cadet.

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...: 

Something to consider when you see a photo of that buff gal or guy . . .

is are they wealthy or employed in the vapid (i.e., entertainment) industry?

A photo showing a buffed RFK Jr., age 69, brings this up.  I don't know really when it was taken, but people who are logic impaired seem to think this proves his anti vaxing position.

No matter what you think of that, what this proves is that he has piles of time on his hands.

There's a massive difference from being awaked at 3:30 in the morning as United Airlines has cancelled, for the second day in a row, your spouses flight home, and this means you woke up only 30 minutes early, and you go on to get up and fix coffee knowing that everyone you meet today is going to be in a desperate crisis, and you are going to be in crisis central all day long, and then come home and hope that she made it home and isn't stranded somewhere, and to have all of this be normal, than to have all freakin' day to do nothing.

Sure, not everyone who doesn't have to deal with the world all day will look buff. Some will just self-destruct. But part of really looking good, so to speak, is having the time to do it.  And for those in the entertainment industry, well that's their job.

Yeah, a person should take care of themselves.  Many don't. Genes (as the young deaths of some celebrities even show) mean a lot.

But stress, anxiety, injuries and daily living mean a lot too.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...: 

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 3. Our lost connection with animals.

ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND

This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.  

(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy.  This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)

The other day, I posted this in a footnote on a completely different topic.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, par...:   

4.  One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.

Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones.  We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't.  Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species.  When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient.  Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.

Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.

Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.

We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat.  Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty.  Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants.  But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.

As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".

It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not.  Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors.  The ranch dogs do not. . . ever.  The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.

I started this thread back in February, when the entire news on "transgenderism" really hit the fan, so to speak.  Since that time there's been the filing of the sorority lawsuit in Laramie, a host of transgender mass shooting, and an absolutely freakish campaign by Budweiser in which a guy trying to channel a girl of the 1960s is sponsoring Bud Light.  Anyhow, this thread was to tie into it somehow, but now a lot of time has gone by, and working seven days out of seven, etc., I've really forgotten what my brilliant point here was to be, more or less.

But I'll go on anyhow.

This photograph shows a young woman at work, doing something that counted, and doing it in a way that was very close to nature.

So does this one:

Mid Week At Work: Mail Carrier, 1915, Los Angeles

And also this one:

Rural Nurse, Virginia. 1919.

And this one:

LOC Caption:   Sarah Crutcher, 12-year-old girl herding cattle. Route 4, c/o S.O. Crutcher. She was out of school (#49 Comanche County) only 2 weeks this year and that was to herd 100 head of cattle for her father, a prosperous farmer. She said: "I didn't like it either." She is doing well in school. Is in Grade 8.] Location: [Lawton, Oklahoma]

I think one of the interesting things about this photographs is, contrary to the modern image of what women wore when doing livestock work in the early 20th and late 19th Centuries, she's dressed in completely typical female attire for the time. She's riding wearing a fairly long skirt and a woman's hat that is typical for the period.

The point here?

Well this.  

We've gotten to the point where we don't deal with animals as they really are, daily.  We also are at the point where a large percentage of the original WASP demographic of the nation (more on this shortly) has lost most of the values it originally had, and replaced them with very weak tea instead.  And we've so removed ourselves from a state of nature, that most people don't have a grasp on what nature really is.

It's hard not to know the reality of the world if you live in it.

This past week, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in Casper in which the plaintiffs claim they suffered emotional distress as their two pet dogs were caught in snares which they claim were improperly placed on public lands by a trapper.  Apparently, in a companion criminal case, the trapper was exonerated.  The state land is very close to the city, which is a problem, but it's still state land, and still unincorporated.

Losing dogs is a tragedy, but emotional distress?  This has never been allowed in the common law, as the law always held that the law is, basically, for people.  If you can claim emotional distress due to the loss of a pet, why not anything?

Now, that sounds cruel, and I understand grieving over the loss of an animal.  I've done it myself.  That is, in fact, one of the things about owning pets.  Normally, you outlive them, and if you are normal, you'll miss them when they die.

It's a part of life.

But emotional distress has been reserved, in the common law, for the loss of humans, based, in the end, for what we feel with the loss of a loved human being.  Not an animal, no matter how loved.

And of course, up until recently, there was no such concept as a legally recognized animal for "emotional support".  Support they did provide, but the bond was in a naturalistic way, not one for which the law afforded protection.

Have we lost something here?

I think we have, and it's connected with real work and real animals.

We'll explore What's Wrong With The World more in this series of threads, but here's one.  Being connected with animals in a real sense, and not in the sanitary removed from nature sense, helped keep us real.  

We've lost that.

It's hard to be obsessively focused on yourself, including your reproductive self, if you're around animals as animals, particularly great big ones that can hurt you.

And I'll bet the thought "I'm a girl, but I want to be a boy" didn't much cross the minds of Icelandic pony riding milkmaids, Oklahoman girl cowpunchers, or Los Angeles mounted mail carriers.

Related Threads:

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 1. A thought on community

What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 2. Care, lack of care, and an existential lack of focus.