In the last blog entry, I talked about the "diminished thing," as Frost put it, which is my life these days.  It was, in part, a catalogue of some of my daily experiences.  But what the oven bird asks in all but words is what to make of this diminished thing, so perhaps the last entry leads to, suggests, entails (but not begs) the question of what I make of all this, of how I deal with it.  (My language gene is constantly irritated by people who use "begs the question" in this context.  To beg the question is a logical fallacy; it's to argue in a circle, assuming, somewhere in the line of argument, what you're supposed to be proving.  It's not appropriate in my sentence, though from the frequency with which I hear it used that way, I think the battle may already have been lost.)

I'm not sure, however, that I have anything very enlightening to say on the subject.  I don't think that we usually act on general (and generalizable) principles; we make our choices ad hoc and try to muddle through as best we can.  For a few years now, my Washburn e-mail tag is a quote from George Eliot: "We must be patient with the makeshift of human understanding."  And that's what we have: a makeshift understanding.  It's what we have and all that we can ask for.  And it's enough.

For forty years now, I've been a contented atheist, even now in the foxhole--or in my case, the hedgehog hole, since, using Isaiah Berlin's distinction, I'm definitely a hedgehog, not a fox.  The world existed for billions of years without me and will continue to exist once I'm gone.  Against all probabilities, I was born and existed.  That doesn't seem to me depressing at all.  When I'm gone, I'll leave behind some traces, some ripples that will slowly (I hope) dissipate.  No soul, no spirit, no lingering awareness.  I can't explain why I find that comforting (other than the fact that the concepts of heaven and hell make no sense to me and have no appeal), but I do.

I also live almost entirely in the present--no Proust's madeleine or even Zuckerman's rugelach to bring back an overwhelming flood of memories.  It's not that I don't love my past.  I do; at almost every stage of my life I've had wonderful, bright, lively, funny friends and experiences.  And when I'm with those friends, either in person or in e-mails, recalling specific moments is always fun and cheering.  I love telling stories about the past--as long as I have an audience, either someone who shared them or someone I think "needs" to learn about them.  But when I'm alone, I rarely relive those times for my own pleasure or amusement.  Again, I can't explain why this is so; it's just the way I live.

So, too, I don't think (and never have) very much about the future.  When I need to make a practical decision, even the most important ones, I just do it without thinking much about the consequences.  When, just as one example, one night I felt bored, I decided it was time for another year abroad.  I didn't weigh the consequences; I just went online to the Fulbright site, discovered the deadline had passed, but thought what the hell? it can't hurt to apply.  When they said there were possiblities in Syria, Oman, and Yemen and asked whether I would accept one of those, I replied yes without hesitation.  And when they offered me Morocco, I took the time to look at a map to see whether I'd prefer El Jadidah or Meknes and typed an immediate response.  I know that being more thoughtful about decisions might have spared me some unforutnate results, but to do so is just not my nature.  And now, not thinking about the future (except in the most practical and necessary terms) has certain advantages.  It's not really denial of the realities to come; it's just a continuation of the way I deal with things.  I know that there will be a point when the pleasures are so severely diminished that life won't seem worth living.  I certainly have no moral or ethical objections to suicide, and I would like to be in control of the end of my life.  But I'm pretty sure that I'll be too cowardly or too afraid of missing something good to choose that option until it's no longer my choice to make.

And so in the present, I muddle through.  I try to enjoy all that I have and try to limit my complaints (though I do wish I'd stop making those small groaning noises that are all too frequent, too indiscriminate, and, I'm sure, more irritating to Mohamed than he'd ever express).  Do I get discouraged?  Sure.  Frustrated?  Ditto.  But then something that I read or see makes me laugh or makes my blood pressure rise or gives me another sort of satisfaction.  And then I climb the stairs or put my sock on or savor my bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I'm a simple sort).  That's my "makeshift understanding," and that's what allows me to keep on keeping on, as we used to say in another place in another time.