Nothing Wrong With That
Up-State New York
Wherever I travel to attend a festival I’ll meet someone who will ask, “Did you walk here?” and I’ll say, “I wish!” It has become a common joke, which I consider flattery really.
It becomes an embarrassment when you can’t boast doing even a measly four kilometers like today. You make the best of everything. Here, we are, five of us adults, crammed in a small Hyundai, meant for four people on a ten hour trip. So I’m reminded of our Inuit people of the north who would for some months know only darkness, stay in their igloo nestled under animal skins and have a tiny light fuelled by whale oil. They would lie there and tell stories to pass the time away.
Our situation going through Pennsylvania and New York states in our small car isn’t anywhere near as austere. We do have stories to tell – lots of them and so passengers and driver discussed a touch about each others’ marital status. One person expressed the satisfaction of being single. The others in the vehicle likely will be betrothed down the line. For myself, well, the writing is on the wall. I’m single and I intend to stick to vows.
I have expressed even recently in Halifax to an eager gathering of fifty young people, “some of you will choose to remain single and celibate and there is virtually nothing wrong with it. For some of us we have got stuff out of our system in a previous life. You may consider that you have another purpose in this life than having families and the sweet bitter entanglement that goes along with it. There is nothing wrong with that.”
I implied that such persons don’t have to be made to feel guilty and that a spiritual centre will fill the gap that would lead to loneliness.
4 KM
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