The Big Sacrifice

Today is Monday. Or is it? If we never adjusted the calendar by incorporating leap year what day of the week would it really be? I get weird on Mondays and so I don't like them. Monday is the start of the big sacrifice. The big sacrifice is time, my time, hours lived doing something for money. I like my work and my co-workers but if I didn't need to work for money I would not work. I would not work anywhere. I would do what I loved.

I've often envied ball players. Not just because I love to watch and play baseball, but because major league ball players get to play and make money at it. Football too. Grown men, making serious money, playing. Yes, they work hard. Yes, they are disciplined and do a lot of things to stay in shape so they can play at their best. But no matter how they feel about it or how well they do it, it's called play.

Frankye is fond of reminding her friends that Native Americans have no word for time. She says this anytime we get on her about being late or not paying attention to time. As a Nanticoke Indian she believes she has a genetic excuse for her lack of adherance to a clock. She's right. I wish there were no word for time in my culture as well.

I was talking to a friend today about visiting restoration communities. My favorite period of American history is the colonial through the revolutionay war period. One of my favorite places is Colonial Williamsburg and I also enjoyed a long ago visit to Old Sturbridge Village in MA. I would have loved to live in America in that time period. As a believer in reincarnation I'm sure I lived somewhere, if not on this earth than at least in the Bardo. Alas, I don't remember any of it. And since menopause there is much of this life I don't remember either.

Not remembering allows me to engage in fantasies when I am reading about that time period. Of course, my fantasies don't include bathing in ice water, or not bathing, toileting in a hole in the ground, or working longer days for survival plowing and harvesting food, making my own clothes from sacks, etc. What I find attractive is the solitariness of the day. The privacy from phones, neighbors on top of you, traffic, constant electronic input and news. I'd like a society that doesn't adhere to a clock but instead responds to the rising and setting sun.

I think about how I can make my life simpler. I could lose the phones, the television, and radio. It would make me more oblivious to what's going on around me, not necessarily a bad thing, but not a guarantee that my life would be simpler. I could never buy anything again unless it contributed to my survival, food, clothes as needed, etc. I could spend my non-working time reading, meditating and sleeping more. I could live in a one - or two-room house. I could not travel more than 10 - 15 miles away and be content to spend more time at home. Somehow I don't think these things would make my life simpler in the way I long for. I think simpler to me means less regimented. Adhereing to a clock is regimentation. Mondays, and what they represent, is regimentation. Maybe I just need to ignore Mondays.