Good Grief 35

Structure
So, here's the thing ... it is hard to know what to do for the best ... and it is a case of constantly living between a rock and a hard spot. I don't feel like doing anything. Motivation, when all feels lost, is a scarce, if not absent, commodity. Therefore, there is no point in waiting to feel ok to do something ... that way, nothing will happen. Like Herman Meville's 'Bartleby' (I was thinking I should change my blip name to Bartleby) ... with his refrain, 'I would prefer not' ...  in the end he 'preferred not' until he died. It was ok when I felt connected to the world, when I felt a part of things ... a wife, a carer ... loved and loving. I would love it if I felt sufficiently sustained by my work, by a sense of purpose, by a fight for something, by wider family and friends, or by me alone even. But I don't. Yet I seem to carry on for some goodness-knows-what reason. It isn't hope because I am not hopeful. I tried that but it runs out of steam and leads to perpetual disappointment, becoming unhelpful and counter-productive.

So, I have a go at daily construction ... I wish I'd done more meccano when I was little. Today with everything telling me not to bother, I thought I'd go up to Edinburgh Festival. But I had to be a bit cunning and so booked the very last ticket available for the preview of Antigone (thanks to Livresse who told me it was on). At various points on the way I could have very easily turned tail and returned home ... the running commentary being along the lines of variations on a theme of, 'what's the point?', struggling to justify the cost, my pointless existence is polluting the atmosphere just getting there - better off being miserable at home,  it doesn't change anything, it is just doing something for the sake of doing something, etc. I know that ultimately that is all that any of us do but doing it with a significant other/family helps to sustain and keep some kind of momentum going that propels us through our lives, through both the good and bad times.

Having a pre-booked ticket meant that I kept going, it was just enough of a hook to get me there. If I didn't make it, well, at least I had tried and it wouldn't break the bank, but in the end it was enough to get me there and even to have a look at the Forth Bridge.

Interestingly Antigone in her grief says, 'I am a strange new kind of "in-between thing", aren't I? .. not at home with the dead or with the living'. She cannot transform her grief into something positive.

... you got to hand it to them Greeks ...