Starting Over

There must be a psychological necessity - or a hidden stimulant - which compels me constantly to seek to attach mathematical relevance to events. Perhaps it is the axiomatic purity of numbers. More often than not the absorption merely reflects the current date, time or age of whatever is at hand. Today for example is the 1st day of September.  This innocuous fact nonetheless captures for me the significance of a threshold of change. It relates to the historic return to school (a growth phenomenon which touches society every year). It may however simply mark a change of month and thus an excuse or opportunity to categorize some anticipated or intended alteration.

The date is almost exactly five months since our return to Canada from Florida. It would not be unusual to contemplate our semi-annual removal in just over a month.  The greater import however is that we have within the past several days wound up an agenda which has mercilessly preoccupied us until now. The matters addressed have all been welcome - as have the results - but the weight of the duty taxed our endurance.  As I like to say, we've been tweaked from head to toe - literally! And everything in between - by which I mean emotionally and spiritually. It was not a period during which we were able to distance ourselves with irreverence.  All the more reason therefore that as things have ended our relief is conspicuous.

I've employed this uniquely lethargic moment to tackle a technical issue which has regularly grieved me.  In the world of social media it cannot be overlooked that the engineers of these so-called publicly spirited vehicles invariably have a commercial interest not far below the surface. Though the motive is understandable, it is equally inescapable that there is a price to be paid for the service.  Barring some devious means of side-stepping the machinery, the only way to avoid the consequence is to back out of the enlarging net which surrounds its use.  Naturally this too entails a price - or at the very least a reduction of some order including submission to rules. Narrowing involvement diminishes the contamination of control but also the breadth of performance. While I hate to admit it, the evolution is not far afield from aging generally. There is no more use pretending to avoid the state of being than there is to imagine we'll somehow be different from our ancestors.  What an amusing paradox that in the process of this evaporation I have acquired 20/20 vision!