The world is a busy street, traffic hurtling this way and that. I should be driving one of those cars but I don't seem to be. I see someone who looks like me struggling with his car, while I seem to be standing on the footpath, detached from it somehow. I seem to be a spectator upon my own life.
Stephen had become disillusioned with work. Remarkable, really, that things had remained interesting for as long they had, but now the colours were fading, the mountains mere hills and the work just work.
"How are things, Stephen?"
"Terrific! Never been better!" A pack of lies, but who wants to hear the bad news? The definition of a bore: you ask him how he is and he tells you.
Disillusionment with work also meant to a large extent disillusionment with life. Stephen had made the mistake (and he now believed it to be a mistake) of making his work his life. He had no hobbies worth the name, no diversions which were really diverting.
What's a hobby? The undoubted fascination of racing pigeons for some people frankly eluded him. Jogging perplexed him. The attractions of gardening were a mystery.
But in spite of this disillusionment with his job he didn't for a moment dream of doing something different. He was canny enough (he believed he was canny not cautious or conservative) to know that to start something new now would be hard, the risk of failure high, and the mere mechanics of changing horses in the midst of this steam would overwhelm his life. And then in another five, ten years, what? The risk of all the same feelings of disillusionment all over again.
So what had been on the periphery of his life now took on an importance and it was on these edges he expended effort and took pleasure.
If the middle had fallen out of his work, the edges had increased in importance. At one edge was the sense of identity. "What line are you in?" was the standard question (or something like it). And Stephen's line seemed to make the questioner interested. It was status. It had a value. It also helped at another part of the periphery: it opened doors; he met people (some at least) whose company he enjoyed. Sounds trite but Stephen placed a value on interesting people being interested in his company. One part of him would have been happy digging ditches. Another part knew that ditch diggers didn't meet interesting people, or at least, the people Stephen found interesting. That his 'line' made him seem interesting, even if, for him, the colour had drained from this 'line', was peripheral. But it was also important.
The river of people flows along the footpath. I look into their faces. Where have they come from? Where do they go at night? Are they happy? What makes their hopes and fears any different from mine?
Another part of the periphery was the perspective work gave life. Stephen was the sort of person who could get overwrought about a flat tyre. Work gave him bigger things to occupy his mind. Work stopped him worrying about overdue library books, visits to the dentist and parking tickets. It wasn't much but it was something.
This bigger things theory also gave the outward impression of ambition: Stephen strove for jobs higher up the ladder to diminish the size of the irks his current occupational station in life presented.
The periphery did not have an existence all its own. It might be of more interest but its existence depended on the centre. No centre, no periphery. No periphery, boredom.
The horror is boredom; to be with nothing to do, time hanging heavy, no-one to talk to. Better to do something you don't really want to do than to do nothing. Better to be rushed off your feet than to have time drag. But not better to talk to anyone rather than no-one.
Disillusionment had also come with the realisation that the orderliness of life in general (but not his in particular) he had once imagined to be the norm was an illusion. He had imagined when growing up that life was like a sheet of graph paper upon which life drew sharp, clear lines. But the draftsman was a one-armed drunkard. The pencil was blunt, the ruler was not straight, the desk was bumpy. His life was disorderly and it was relief to discover most people were the same. It was also disillusioning (again) to discover that the idea of general orderliness was a con. There were books about it now, on the general theme of chaos. But again, chaos was an overblown description. Try 'muddle'. Chaos is big, important, noteworthy. Muddle is ordinary, unexceptional, pedestrian.
"I'm terrific ... how about you?" Stephen would reply to the standard greeting, knowing that most people like the sound of their own voices and like it better when they're talking about themselves.
Stephen observed that most people gave a guarded response. Was this glossed-up depression (don't want to be too much of a misery guts) or talked-down ebullience (don't want to be too cock-a-hoop)?
"Pretty good..."
"Oh ... been worse!"
"Can't complain..."
"I'd really like to make contact with you, and tell you how I actually feel, but I know that neither of us have the time or know each other well enough to make that sort of commitment. Maybe one day ...."
"Not too bad thanks..."
But sometimes:
"Wouldn't be dead for quids!"
Wouldn't be dead for quids. Stephen at first hearing considered it very seriously. Would he be dead for quids? What would being dead be like? A blessed release (as the saying goes)? Was the reality of life better or worse than the theoretical state of death?
"If I were any better I'd be dangerous."
It's all a con. Is it?
© Tim Potter 1991
