I am surrounded by and in touch with many good, nice, intelligent and spiritually oriented people in my life that I can consider close friends; some relatively new and older ones for 20, 30, 40, 50 and even 60 years. Yet, I feel alone and lonely, because I don’t have that day in, day out connection that I had when Linda and I were together for 30 years. Someone to come home too. I was quite surprised when I realized that just in the last few days.

Always I was the loner, with acquaintances and friends everywhere, that I connected with in a variety of ways. I could spend lots of time by myself and was drawn to meditation and various aspects of solitude as a way of Being. Part of my ‘Practice’ and a way of styling myself for the world. So I was busy playing several roles at all times, because that was what active, intelligent, busy and well-adjusted people did.

Yet, here I am, alone. It is not how I thought I would end up. I actually had no thoughts about ‘how’ I would end up. I just assumed there would be a comfortable long-term settling into whatever changes precede that dying at a ripe old age, unforeseeable years into some future, seemed fair. It still seems fair. It just feels empty.

Did I really piss away a lifetime having no plan no ambition just doing the next thing that seemed interesting? The first half of it was all self-serving and criminal and drug and alcohol addled. The second half still fairly self-serving but with the intention of ‘doing good’ and becoming a ‘good’ person. OK! Now what?. Soon 75 years on a carousel? That’s what it kind of feels like.

From my Buddhist viewpoint I think I’ve been useful in converting loads of Karma, so that perhaps less is left behind for other beings that follow after me, to clean up. That seems fair and good and just. And it seems, that will have to be sufficient. Adequate actually, all things considered. Contentment is a mild off-shoot, so that’s sort of good; I just want more.

That may be the clue to the real human condition. We do our best and settle for ‘it coulda been worse’… and for many it is. And then get out of the way and let everything move on. It may just be that simple.

We come to life, we declare an I,

A Me and a Them and then off

We Go, to go, to do, to be, to

Come and sit and stay and

Move and roll and play and

Role and act and wonder. Is

All this worth the effort and

Time it takes to do, then to

Think, wonder and wish we

Knew more than

We know we do.