Adversus Naïveté
it’s about Time
Weather this instant is cooler outside than in, 73F to 74F, but sliding the porch door open, 95% humidity hits rude, abrupt: back inside with cuppa and square, waning gibbous moon straight up directly atop my left shoulder.
Feeling the opposite of Marcus with his sagacity, I am thinking, knowing, remembering, somewhat regretting, what? Time. Time, my Ordinary Time. Time is all we have. Regardless how we are compensated for Time -- pay, overtime pay, holiday time pay, recognition, medals, awards, ribbons, admiration, compliments, honors and promotions, Time is all we have, plain ordinary Time is all we have to offer, to sell, to exchange, to enjoy, in which to live and love. How did I use it? I worked. In my life’s Ordinary Time, I worked. Hard. Diligent. Long, hard, diligent and productive. In most Navy tours, I was in the office alone Saturday mornings. Where did I get that? My father started me in the fish market at age nine, summers, after school, Saturday mornings scrubbing trucks. Twenty years of “The Navy Comes First.” For the Good of the Company is the fiction of Dame Folly who inhabits every corporate “person” but is no person at all. No company has a heart except of greed for our Time.
The Wisdom of Otis woke me: during my last Navy assignment in Washington DC, the day one of my subordinates, a GS-15 who was a retired Navy captain, told me, “Once you retire, the Navy hopes never to hear from you again.” His name was Otis, it was the wisdom of Otis. No organization has a heart of mercy, lovingkindness, chesed. A company’s heart is for mission. Naïveté buys into, trusts Folly's Promise, gives loyalty and naively expects loyalty in return, exchanges Ordinary Time for Folly’s Invitation. In Time, or perhaps not until +Time, he may see that Time was all he had, and it is gone.
Wise for his age, from a short distance I am seeing and admiring one young man, anonymous here, who seems to understand at twenty-two, that life isn’t about money, medals, awards, recognition, praise, it’s about Time.
Wisdom’s Feast
Wisdom has built her house,
she has set up her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her maids to call
from the highest places in the town,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
To him who is without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Leave simpleness, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
Folly’s Invitation and Promise
A foolish woman is noisy;
she is wanton and knows no shame.
She sits at the door of her house,
she takes a seat on the high places of the town,
calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
And to him who is without sense she says,
“Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
But he does not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Proverbs 9 almost fits. Close enough.
W