Life As Performance Art 130

Today, Gentle Reader, I am going to continue with my study and meditation on the Desiderata. Here is the next stanza: "Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism." I do not tend to think of myself as one who has achieved much in life. As I mentioned to some people at church during coffee after the service yesterday, I have really had to be very creative with my life, abandoning such entitlements as most people tend to take for granted in order to be creative with whatever resources I have had available, however small and scant. What have I achieved? I don't own my home. I live in a tiny subsidized apartment. I have not successfully published any of my writing, nor has my art found its way to a good gallery. I work in a field that is poorly paid, and when I retire in a year and a half, I will have little in the way of savings as I rely only on a modest government pension that will, hopefully, keep me alive for the rest of my life. I am also the only survivor of my family, with most of them dead and the others all disappeared. Hardly a recipe, this, for a successful old age. On the other hand, as far as my writing is concerned, I have written a novel (the Thirteen Crucifixions, serialized on this blog in 2014 and 2015, should anyone care to look for it), and a number of short stories and poems. I had a faithful following in the nineties for my public poetry readings. I also have this blog that I write daily, with also a small but faithful following of international readers. As far as drawing and painting is concerned, I have grown and developed as an artist, and I have sold more than one hundred original works of my art. Even though my friends have changed over the years, I do have a few long and cherished and stable friends in my life. I have also become fluent in Spanish, a language I am still learning, and I have the help and support of a particularly new and valued friend who lives in Colombia, as well as my friends in Monteverde, Costa Rica. On my small resources I have been able to travel in those countries and Mexico every year over the past decade. You know, Gentle Reader, I really haven't done so badly. I am also free from all addictions, and enjoy, especially for someone in their sixties, good and robust health. I eat well, and I am successfully losing weight, if rather slowly. As far as my career is concerned, it is humble and poorly paid, but in subsidized housing it is enough and I have the privilege of walking with people suffering from mental health challenges towards recovery and an improved quality of life. I have lasted in this career for the last fifteen years. I have also worked in care and support work in other areas, and I also helped start and coordinate a dynamic Christian community that ministered to people on the streets, survivor sex workers, people living with AIDS and people in the LGBT etc., community. I have not made money from any of this, but that is not how I measure success. I do feel like a richer, wiser and more loving person from my life experiences and work, and that for me is the real measure of success. Despite some very awful and self-interested people I have encountered, I am still often blessed and surprised by the good I see and experience in others, including those who have been available to help me in my own times of need. For example, when I was homeless. When I became sick in Mexico. When I was assaulted near my apartment a few years ago. people have always been there, and with my small resources, I still seek to be present for others. This, for me, is success.