Opus 2020-233: Ode to Old: Boring Yourself to Death

 ave you known people who retire and die in a very short time.  I know I am not the only one to notice it.  When I got my first teaching position, one of the men on staff had been a teacher at my junior high school.  Keep in mind I was 40 when I transitioned to the classroom.  He was still going strong.  He seemed in the peak of health.  A few years later he retired and was dead within a year.  It makes you think.

I was going through some notes from Pensees and Blaise Pascal had a thought that might give some insight into this.

“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”  Highlight Loc. 900-903

Often when people retire they find that there is nothing to do.  Their whole life was their job.  Without it they are lost.  There body starts to wind down.  Before you know it they have bored themselves to death.

I can sympathize.  I am retired.  It is really hard to get up and get going when you don’t have any deadlines.  I make my own deadlines.  I set the alarm for 5:00 so I can get up and spend some time in worship and study.  I also have children and grandchildren that bring constant joy to life.  It helps to have things important to care about.

Stay active.

Pascal, Blaise.  Pensees.  Project Gutenberg.

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