3xl has been caused to take time to think on his life this week.
As both my loyal readers will remember, 3xl began a TH.M last week. (If you do not know what it is, you will probably not care) One of my first assignments for college is found under the interestingly named study guide abbreviation of "Auto Bio"... An interesting title, initially innocuous, if not a little automatistic or techno in its semantic resonance.
Intrigued, I opened up the file, and delved in, wondering what this might entail and where it might end.
At first hearing, I thought it sounded like a setting on one of those energy star, EPA friendly, green compliant, front loading washing machines, that sports the ubiquitous, "European design" bragging rights sticker, stands a silvery eight feet tall, costs well over a thousand bucks, has a name you can't pronounce or understand like Nepotism tune, or Naughty Lass and yet doesn't clean your clothes very well.... Cheaply.
In fact so cheaply, that if you own the machine for 50 years you will eventually recoup the cost of buying it over the other kind.
These machines always have an instruction manual that is the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica, written in more languages than the UN etiquette primer for new Russian Diplomats(spot the oxymoron), and would take great pains to explain all the reasons why this is a jolly good machine and you should feel good, justified and not a little self righteous for buying it...let alone being able to buy it !!. (You know you have entered the elite of apparel cleansing machines, when the kind and altruistically offered, extended warranty alone costs more than the next machine in the line you just walked by.)
By page 245, after the Serbo-Croat section on cleansing, The "Lichtensteininian" section on laundering, the Russian section on avoiding running,(because it is futile) and the English section on bleaching and whitewashing you would have these instructions.
Put your socks and unmentionables in to the "Mealy zx3279" and set on... Auto Bio. Awaiting a positive outcome for that endeavor would be as much fun as sunbathing in the sand at Bikini Atoll in the 50's, and not expecting a "healthy glow," however no snow owls were hurt in the manufacture of this machine(though 3 acres of renewable forest went in to the producing of the gargantuan instruction manual) and it will (not)wash your clothes in a far more environmentally friendly way.
But that was not what Auto Bio meant.
I surmised that Auto Bio was perhaps a new nomenclature for a sophisticated computer testing analysis program, that did 15 million tests in one second on your new hybrid, flex fuel, synergy drive state of the art, "Tomato Prescience," to tell you why your windscreen wipers come on when you indicate left. ( you are using the stem/lever/thing on the wrong side of the wheel by the way) But no that was not it either.
Auto Bio, as it happens, is short for autobiography. One of 3xl's first assignments was to write his life story. Of course his lazy side said he wished he had done this course twenty years ago before he got busy, or before he had so much more to write down. The other side of him thought that this was actually a long over due process and something that he wished he had done long ago. In fact he really really wished that his parents had done some kind of autobiography before they left. However ordinary a life is, it has much value to those that have loved those lives.
He remembers talking to his Italian step grandma and having her tell him about the time when Prince Phillip came to tea in their Parisien garden, or Louis Armstrong played piano and trumpet and sang for them into the hot African night, or Earth Kitt took her ball home after her concert, complained about the food and was a real bag-diva(this is not a Hindu term), or how JB Priestley and his family life were to live with, and how his Grandad converted to Catholicism for love and built churches all over Nigeria with convicts. Yes some people have wonderfully full and interesting lives and we pass them by in the supermarket, or the road never knowing what riches they contain and what beauty and depth they are treasuring and giving sanctuary to. Such was only part of the fullness of her life and it is not over yet.
In fact maybe there is a sad irony encapsulated and embedded in the words "Auto Bio." (you know, like if you play it backwards it says "take multivitamins"!!) To wit , that too many lives are lived on auto, and pass all too quickly without reflection, reassessment, reconfiguring or resetting a course. How many lives have been lived, with out "me time" that is purposefully set aside to take stock, and having done that, not to just sit down, head in hands and cry those oft heard words, "where did all the time go..." But to rejoice in the past and to plan for the future. To change if need be, to improve, intensify or desist from a course or direction and seek another.
It was a famous Greek guy I believe, known for his hosiery leasing (Sock Rates) that said that the 'unexamined life is not worth living,' and another Greek dude, brother of the famous Chip Otle, Arist Otle that said, "well begun is half done, " though I am told he half hinched that from some Roman dude called P. Lagiarism, who was a Pro Verb, or Quo Vadis or something, anyway you get the point. It is good to begin well but to have a full life it must be examined, assessed and then check the course plotted for the future. If you don't, you may end up locked into Auto Bio.
So what of 3xl's autobiography, will it rank alongside other great works of literature, like the Irish book of temperance(a short one this), or the Belgium guide to night life, or even the British exotic cook book, The Calvinists Guide to Self Help, or Arminius' guide to home bomb making, or the Pelagius' book Original sin, was it that original or did Satan beat him to it?, or "How Total is Total depravity" by the new author Justin Bi Grace.
Well perhaps not but it will be helpful for him to assess and to think again to remember and to reminisce, perhaps to revisit things that were learned and experienced but lost, that should not have been, I have written page 20 and I am three years old, so I know it is going to be good.
So 3xl throws out a challenge to you both, and the one reading with interest, what are you going to leave for your children, and those you love, or have felt that they have been better for knowing you?
A house or a car, money or jewelery? Or will your legacy to them be a story, a chronicle of a life, an inside view to experiences of one that you loved and a new depth to knowing, communicating and loving those ones that it is too easy to pass by on Auto Bio.
3xl feels honored and truly blessed to know quite a few of such people and would love to read about their life. (and not just the funny comic relief bit where he comes in.) This is because these lives unwritten, though not un-lived are truly deep puzzles and hidden treasures, with all the fullness and density of layers seen and unseen that make for a masterpiece of writing, and grand fiction playing out for real as the master plot weaver unfolds His intricate patchwork of our life and His part in it.
Billy Shakes once said that All the worlds a stage and we just actors on it, or something sounding more Elizabethan and Jacobitish. Well 3xl shares at least a country with Billy Bob and he reckons that all the world can be a library also, and is full of books being written as we go from one "stage" to the next. Sometimes we have the privilege of watching a mighty performance that touches us and causes us to strive to be more than those on Auto Bio and when we write it down it goes into the Library of the world in such a way that others can rejoice at its reading in the years to come.
3xl approves of this message and he did not even have to pay for it.
Signing out creatively...
3xl
No comments:
Post a Comment