The Crossroads

A man stands at an intersection in the middle of nowhere.

He slowly turns 360 degrees, drinking in the expansive gently rolling panorama in all directions. Fields of golden grain, some green fallow paddocks; some patches of red cultivated soil, other fields exploding with sunflowers.

A few blue hills in the distance.

He is reasonably tall. Not short, that is for sure, but not super-tall like some younger guys are these days. Put it this way – if it was the 1800s, he would be considered a tall man. Today? Not so much. Just a tad above average.

He is around 60 years of age but likes to think that he appears younger, fiftyish at most. There is a fine line between pride in appearance and vanity. He wears his civvy uniform of quality faded jeans, a black tee shirt and black hiking boots. His hair is medium brown with traces of grey that he’d like to minimize.

Is he fit? Not overly but he appears slim (with clothes on, anyway) and generally feels good, although lately he is experiencing self-doubt in that area.

Today he is standing at the crossroads.

Not literally, however.

Although if he flicks back through enough photos that his beautiful long-suffering partner has taken of him over the past decade in various poses all around the world, he is sure that there would be at least one photo of him at a crossroads somewhere.

He’d be sitting or standing in a nonchalant manner, heavily posed.

‘Album covers’, she generously refers to these fleeting moments captured on camera.

But today he is nowhere near one of these panoramic locations. He in fact sits at his laptop typing this, wondering what the hell is wrong with him.

Life was wonderful a few days ago, full of possibilities, yet has turned to shit in the past 24 hours.

He’s gone from being excited about goals and the near/medium term future to having a sneak preview of his future, a future stuck in a cycle of routines and habits, stories that go nowhere, edging closer to old age and death.

Are his best days behind him? Physically he isn’t going to get any better, right?

Workwise, he is close to being an irrelevance, an older teacher who, despite a wealth of skill and experience, will be increasingly viewed as an anachronism by young staff starting out.

He knows that he has deep knowledge and could successfully advocate for himself to work more – and longer – but he also realizes that he has lost his hunger for the job. What is the point of fighting for a role that he no longer wants to perform?

What to do if he no longer spends most days ‘going in’ to work?

He’s had flashes of insight into a universal truth ultimately experienced by all, but too horrible to be openly discussed.

It is this:

What is the point of acquiring all that knowledge, skill, insight, and material wealth? When you die it is all gone. The sun comes up the next day and life goes on as if you never existed. The water closes around where you were.

But he sips his freshly brewed coffee, his one chemical indulgence for the day. He has been in this headspace before and found that by tapping away on the keyboard and exploring his negative insights he increasingly will see that it is his thinking which is all wrong, not the reality of his situation.

Sure, he will slowly get older and die – we all do.

But if he does, he will be lucky to have had that extra time and not died when young. A sister and a younger brother of his weren’t so lucky.

Life really is about finding some sort of happiness each day, noticing something simple and beautiful. Bird sounds. The scent of freshly baked bread. The warmth of sun in Winter.

Good coffee.

If one’s approach isn’t working, change the approach.

Sometimes it is simply a matter of having a catch-up with a friend.

Or even finding some human contact that is out of the ordinary.

When he was waiting for his coffee order at a local café this morning, another customer, a middle-aged man with an honest face, made conversation with him, tentatively asking him about his boots (yes, he really is wearing the civvy uniform, including the boots, despite not hiking or being literally at a crossroads!).

They then talked for five or ten minutes about his boots, where to get them, hiking and the like - an unforced conversation – before their coffees arrived and both left in separate directions.

Even that conversation lifted him. He thought on the short drive home how he should have pointed out one or two other things about selecting hiking boots before he smiled at his silliness. Because none of it mattered. It was the connection that mattered.

Maybe he is a little lonely.

One day soon he (or ‘they’ if she hasn’t left him) will drive out into the country and find a crossroads in a pretty setting.

Then he can literally stand at a crossroads and slowly rotate through the full 360 degrees, appreciating whatever views are there.

She might even snap a photo of him in his surroundings.

Until then he needs to stop being so bloody negative.