A year ago I wrote the following - "Now that I am past 50 and getting uglier with each passing month I find
that the way I have lived my life up to this point has indeed led me
here, but more than that, there comes a realization that with the
decline of the body comes a decline in fate and fortune, and a gradual
drift into decay and death. What is an old man with skills that do not
translate into work for pay do to survive?
I will be leaning on Osho's answer in the coming months as my money and time fades away - "Be realistic: Plan for a miracle."
Somehow I have made it through a year of plague without a job and no income. The last time I pulled a paycheck was September, 2018. For a person born into wealth or having somehow achieved it this would be nothing special, but for a bottom of the barrel schmuck like myself this must be the kind of miracle Osho was talking about, pulling fish and bread from a shallow basket for 2 1/2 years. Today I covered another month of rent and have enough cash to buy food for a few more weeks. When spring arrives I will most likely have less than $100, then what? With another year of plague under way I am unsure how to proceed, I cannot work because the mask mandate makes working for cash not a realistic plan due to mask-wearing triggering asthma attacks. I have spent the past 30 years clerking in offices, and with offices in Chicago being shut down I seem to be one of the unfortunates who have fallen through the cracks. I am trying my best to avoid panic, and when I look back far and near I have had so many small miracles befall me that it would be idiotic and cowardly of me to fear what appears to be a bleak near-term future. To abandon faith in the cosmic consciousness at this point of my lifetime would be a mistake, surely. What I am feeling perhaps is not a lack of faith, but something new has been added to the equation, which is making me at times feel an absolute terror striking me dead in the heart. Of course the new X in the equation is nothing new at all, it has been there all along, waiting patiently to come into play and what is filling me with fear is the sense that the time for its full stop execution is fast approaching. In 1987 when I was a philosophy student at NIU I would take walks in the local cemetery contemplating the X. When I worked at the computer warehouse in 1990 a co-worker asked me "where are you going?" I pointed down and this irritated him, "no, that's a long time away, I mean before that!" That long time away is now closer and this proximity is bringing his question into sharp focus. One of those random insights which have inspired and guided me throughout life is "the hardest part is starting and finishing," and with the finish line in sight the difficulties of course are most likely going to be sharper and more testing than the middle part of my life. It is now time to rely on the foundation which I have put into place many years ago and to ride out the storm, with a lot of prayer, meditation, luck, and maybe a miracle or two.