The vague discomfort that I always felt in Yuma overlapped in some way with how I felt around RVers in general. The whole thing seemed like a big revolving door. Every year there's a new crop of newbies with the standard notions. The romance of pretty scenery and escapism is not long-lasting; that and normal human aging soon put them on a lot in Yuma.
Recently Peter Yates died. He directed the movie Breaking Away circa 1980, about growing up in an Indiana college town, with a subplot about bicycle racing. The best speech in the movie comes from Dennis Quaid, who plays the ex-high school quarterback. (All of the boys are 19 year old townies, bored and unemployed, and not college-bound.) With some envious resentment they watch the college football team practice one day, when the ex-high school quarterback soliloquizes:
Recently Peter Yates died. He directed the movie Breaking Away circa 1980, about growing up in an Indiana college town, with a subplot about bicycle racing. The best speech in the movie comes from Dennis Quaid, who plays the ex-high school quarterback. (All of the boys are 19 year old townies, bored and unemployed, and not college-bound.) With some envious resentment they watch the college football team practice one day, when the ex-high school quarterback soliloquizes:
You know what really gets me though? Here I am, I've gotta live in this stinkin' town, and I gotta read in the newspaper about some new hot shot kid, the star of the college team. Every year it's gonna be a new one, and every year it's never gonna be me.
These college kids out here, they're never gonna get old, or out of shape, 'cause new ones come along every year.
I don't know where Peter Yates died. It was probably on the California coast or in Manhattan. But it would have been more fitting if it had been Yuma.
College towns, RV freshmen, and retirement towns are concrete examples of what the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote about in his classic essay, On Death and its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our True Nature, a chapter in Volume 3 of The World as Will and Idea, (this latter link might work better, if the first link fails:click "read online" in the left margin, then the scanned book appears, and finally move the slider at the bottom to page 274.)
As the scattered drops of the roaring waterfall change
with lightning rapidity, while the rainbow (whose sup-
porter they are) remains immovably at rest and quite un-
touched by that ceaseless change, so every Idea and
every species of living creature remains quite untouched
by the continual change of its individuals. But it is the
Idea, or the species in which the will to live is really
rooted, and manifests itself; and therefore also the will
is only truly concerned in the continuance of the species.
[Search for 'waterfall' in the link.]
It is hard to imagine yourself as one of these mobile and transient droplets. You seem more important and permanent than that, at least in the middle of life. It is only at the beginning and end of life, when the droplets are near the infrared fringe -- and then finally the deep violet edge of the rainbow -- that you can sense your own rapid motion and insignificance, unless Schopenhauer is right, and "we" associate ourselves more with the rainbow than the droplet.
Comments
I agree that we are programmed to survive as a species and we spend lots of our lives in service to that...finding a mate so we can build a nest, have young 'uns, nurture them and bring 'em up "right", and tirelessly dedicate ourselves to this for 20 years or so. And you point out how disappointing it can then be when one pursues their ultimate dream beyond that. It could be pretty depressing.
There are those moments, like feeling giddy when lost in the pine forest, etc., when one detaches from all the identities....mate, parent, rver, college student, business executive, fashionista, etc. whatever it is that grabs our ass and virtually owns us and drives our behavior mercilessly, all in service to the mores of one's particular society or other identities which are archetypal in their nature, such as adventurer, hero, savior, messiah, etc.
In essence, both the raindrops and the rainbow are transitory. It is the experience of them which, to me, is living. Many people only experience one or the other. The truly lucky man or woman experiences them both, and perhaps more, and then lets them go.
The rainbow might be transitory, but on a drastically longer time scale.
Cheers,
Kelly
I also have no intention of allowing myself to get to the point of taking 10 prescriptions a day, which keep me alive, only to complain about how lousy I feel and oh, poor me!