On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, TN. Two days later, as the country was experiencing utter turmoil from coast to coast, M and I were married at Trinity Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, WI. If that marriage had lasted, today we would have been celebrating 38 years of married life. Holy smokerinos, do these kinds of thoughts make me feel old!

I now find it interesting that I chose to get married in a year that was one of the most turbulent and definitive ones of the times. M and I went honeymooning when many of the major metropolitan areas of the country were experiencing riots in the aftermath of MLK’s murder. Bobby Kennedy was killed in California just a couple months later; two more months after that was the Democratic National Convention debacle in Chicago. My oh my, the flashbacks I’m having as I write this…

I guess if I can have memories this old, then feeling old, at least at times, isn’t all that surprising.

Lately, the energy I’ve been able to summon to make blog entries (well, actually, just to make it through the day) has waned a tad. Since last week, for sure, I’ve been trying to pace myself even more conscientiously that I usually do. Seeing my life’s blood literally gush from my body in the nosebleed episode had a big impact on me, I think. And, too, I was diagnosed with another eye infection last week. So, I’ve been fighting with that condition, which has led to diminished motivation to stare at a computer screen. Anyway, if you’re out there checking blog entries, you’ll probably have noticed less productivity from ol’ TechnoMonk.

I had a chat with a fellow I work with today. He’s a couple years younger than me, and he disclosed that, physically, he’s been struggling as well. It seems as if his energy level has taken an unexplained, precipitous drop. It wasn’t a gradual thing. Suddenly he’s fatigued all the time. All the medical tests that he’s had so far have turned up nothing; still, this kind of stuff can weigh mightily on one’s mind. I sure know about that firsthand.

It just another example of the fact: we never, really, have any control…

“Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death…[and is] setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later we’re going to have an experience we can’t control: our house will burn down, someone we love is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head…to be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land…” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 71).

Postscript for the day ... As I was just putting the finishing touches on this entry, the phone rang. My supervisor, who normally does not call me at home, just did. The news is: one of our colleagues, a good man, and a department chair who reported directly to me, died this evening, apparently of a heart-attack. I don’t have the details. I am in shock. More later...