What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
A simplistic question in so many ways as so many definitions are needed. How long is long? 100 years? 200 years? Back to 1066 to watch the Battle of Hastings? 1588 to see the Spanish Armada sailing up the channel? 1815 to see the Battle of Waterloo and talk with Wellington and Napoleon – why not? I am Anglo-Welsh and New Brunswick is bilingual, French and English, so why shouldn’t I – or anyone else who wants to live such a long life – have a talk with both of them?
And does living a very long life include the concept of being healthy, and happy, and wise, and not living in squalor or poverty or in a permanent war zone? How about being kept in an incubator, or an iron lung, or on permanent life support? How long is long under those (or similar) conditions. And what about friends and family? In the Celtic myths, men who visit the fairies in Ireland and live and eat with them, come back to reality [now define that word in this day and age] only to find their friends and families long dead and gone. So what would the conditions of the ‘return’ be like if a long life meant watching the passing of everyone and everything you know or returning to a world you no longer recognized?
And change is so rapid nowadays. AI is developing so quickly, how can anyone keep up? I know that as I slow down (mentally and physically) I understand less and less about the machines I use, including my Nexus Rollator. Does a ‘very long life’ include sipping from the Fountain of Youth? Or does it consist of an enlarged old age – post molestam senectutem, nos habebit humus – after a troubled old age, the earth will have us. I am sure we all recognize Gaudeamus igitur, in Latin, and its theme of Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere – where now are those lived in this world before us, and if we don’t, then how swiftly we have forgotten the power of Latin is with its memorable phrases and omnipresent seeds of memento mori .
For me the question is a clear one – do you wish for quantity (a very long life) or quality (a very happy and successful one, even if it is a bit shorter)?
A close friend of mine, one of the most honest and courageous people that I have known, suffering in a horrific way from terminal cancer, asked for, and received, MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). It was a long legal and medical process to get MAID, involving famiy members, lawyers, doctors, and many other things. As the Romans used to say mors omnia solvit– death resolves everything. My friend and his family preferred to shorten life – on their own terms – rather than prolong it under such prolonged suffering and torment. My friend, I salute you and your family and commend you for your bravery.
So, define the terms within which that very long life would be lived – and then ask yourself the question once more. Because as it stands right now, with no further understanding, the answer should only be “depends”. And remember, lives are like swimming pools – they have shallow ends and deep ends. All too often when you talk about life and the end of life, so much depends.
Comment:
I must thank my friend, Moo, for his depiction of the fireworks from New Year’s Eve. Sky Flowers, he calls it. The fireworks have gone already – but – vis breve, ars longa – his painting still survives.
The jaws that bite, the claws that snatch, the hands grasping you through the railings as you scuttle upstairs.
Those same hands descending, beating, shaking you, back and forth, a rag doll, then thrusting you into that cold, dark cupboard beneath the stairs, no story, your childhood reality.
And now, those dreams come back and you lie awake watching as the grey revenants return and the nightmares repeat themselves, again and again.
And return they will, until that final curtain call, when the stage turns black, and you’ll never be taunted, haunted, and hunted ever again.
Comment: On Thursday night we discussed the difference between poetry of play and poetry that expresses the authenticity of being. Into which category does this poem fall. Intertextuality – the idea of texts talking to texts. How many different texts can you count, talking to each other in this poem that may even be a Jackpine Sonnet?
What on earth does that mean? When? Are we talking time of day, or time of night? Are we talking a season of the year? Are we talking mood swings – happy now, oh dear, mood swing, not happy now? Are we talking Hen Wen, the magic white pig at the feeding trough? “I am at my happiest, oink-oink, when I am eating a big burger from …” – and here you name your favorite burger outlet. None of that Hen Wen nonsense applies, of course, if you are vegetarian, vegan, or have an allergy to burgers or buns!
I can tell you when I am least happy – 7:30 am, on a wet, damp, cold, icy, snowy winter morning, when I have to get up, get dressed, and go out in the mush and the slush to have an early morning blood test – no food or drink for 12 hours – at the local hospital. Last time I did that, I couldn’t find a parking spot, and drove round and around until eventually one opened up, as far away as possible from the hospital of course. No, I was not a happy camper on that occasion. Especially when I slipped on the ice, returning to my car, and then found someone had driven into my side while I was parked there. Oh, that made me so happy and so jolly, I laughed until I cried. [I do hope you can recognize sarcasm when you see it.]
So, let us reverse the question and reframe it by saying that I am perfectly happy when the things that make me miserable do not happen. No fender-bender in the ice and snow – I am a happy man. Caught speeding or jumping a red light – totally by accident, of course, – and the man in blue asks me for my license, sees that it’s my birthday, and lets me drive away with a verbal warning and a jovial ‘happy birthday”! Ah yes, reverse psychology, that sort of thing does make me happy.
So, above all, it’s the little things in life that go right, and not wrong, that make me happy. This morning’s boiled egg, boiled to perfection – not too hard, not too soft. My coffee a perfect blend designed to bring joy and happiness. Marmalade on blue cheese, the Welsh equivalent of Chinese sweet and sour – oh yes, and actually making someone laugh or smile when they read this nonsense I write. Even Hen Wen grunts with joy – oink! oink! – at that one. So if you have enjoyed this post, please take the time to send me an oink or two, and I will be happy. Thanking you in advance is, yours sincerely, Hen ‘oink!’ Wen ‘oink!’ Wink, ‘oink!’
As the arthritis gets worse and the pain grips more and more, I am not sure that I have any favorite form of physical exercise. Perhaps getting in and out of the whirlpool bath? Getting out after a half hour or so soaking, is easy enough. But getting in, after a couple of days without one – well, that can be a bit of a pain.
Then there’s getting up in the morning. That is exercise in itself. Hauling myself out of bed. Limping to the bathroom. Doing some s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g when I remember too. Painful to do, but I usually feel usually a bit better afterwards. Don’t forget the obstacle race of making it, half-asleep, to the bathroom during the night. Then there’s getting dressed in the morning and that’s always an interesting exercise. Sometimes I need help with socks, or shirt, especially after a bath. Shoes are always a wrestling match, as are shorts and jeans. What used to take me about 90 seconds, now takes closer to ten or fifteen minutes. Hardly aerobic!
And speaking of aerobics, physical exercise can also refer to anaerobic and an / aerobic with lactic acid build up. Lactic acid and the ensuing cramps have never been anyone’s favorite form of physical exercise, unless they are masochists instructed by a sadistic coach, as sometimes happens.
The stairs are always a great physical exercise. Easiest is walking safely downstairs in the morning. But there is always the fear of a fall, especially with the turn round the Newell post at the bottom. And then there’s climbing up again safely at night. That takes longer and longer, one painful foot lift at a time.
Cooking has become a physical exercise too. Peeling the vegetables and cutting them up can be quite vigorous. Standing at the stove cooking, gently stirring the food, that is good exercise, as is setting the table and serving the food.
But perhaps my favorite exercise is what the Abulenses call El paseo de la nevera. This is to get up, to walk to the fridge, and to grab another can of beer or open a new bottle of wine. Maybe that is my favorite form of physical exercise, that and the repeated elbow lift and flex that is necessary to drain the can or the bottle or the glass. And don’t forget, there’s always the pinch of salt and the over-the-shoulder salt throw, always necessary with this style of blogging, where everything you read should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?
How on earth do you define a lazy day? If a Lazy Boy is a chair, what is a Lazy Day? Is it something like a Lazy Rocker? Or a Lazy Twister? ‘Come on, let’s twist again’! Is it no more than a lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer, as the song would have it? In which case, is it possible to have a lazy day when summer has gone, the days grow cold, and autumn is on the way? And who is having the lazy day, anyway? And is that a lazy painting I see before my eyes?
Enjoying retirement, as I am, busy or not, I feel quite rested, most of the time. As for being productive or unproductive, well! I feel productive when I post an answer to a blog prompt. So today, I am being productive. Ipso facto, I suppose I am not being lazy, though the sun is shining outside, the leaves are actually staying on the trees, after the overnight frost, and are not hurrying and scurrying and busying themselves in falling to to the ground. It’s a lazy leaf day – they are definitely not being productive. If they were, they would be littering the yard for me to tidy them up and then they would be productive by making me labour, and I would not be having a lazy day, because I would be busy picking up the leaves, putting them into piles, then waiting for the busybody wind to stop being lazy and to interfere with my work and scatter leaves around the garden again.
So, back to the original prompt – Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive? Let us give a totally non-committal, political answer – after all, it is the election season – and say – “It depends”. It depends on the multiple meanings of a lazy day, rested, productive, or unproductive. If the hen doesn’t lay an egg, is she being lazy and unproductive? Or does she feel fulfilled and rested? I could ask any one of the dozen or so eggs I keep resting in the fridge. Oh boy, do they have a restful time, lying there, eggs-in-waiting. And what are they waiting for? That joyous moment when they appear in public, are cracked open and whisked into omelets or scrambled like the brain – rested, rusted, busy, productive or unproductive – of anyone so twisted that they would write anything like this in response to a simple prompt. A simple prompt, you say? Now that’s a great departure point – what do you mean by a simple prompt? Answers on an egg-shell fragment please!
Ah yes, it’s another busy, productive day and my scrambled brains, like the scrambled eggs I devoured for breakfast, are all as busy as little bees can be, even though the bees are now out of season and there are none left in the garden. And with that I bid you farewell, au revoir, or is it adieu? I’m too lazy to care? Please choose whichever buzz word suits you best!
What on earth do you mean by energy? And why should energy be associated with things? For example, today’s painting (above) is by my friend Moo. He calls it Joy to the World. It is indeed a joyous painting, full of light and creative energy. The photo does not do justice to the painting, which sparkles and reaches out to draw the viewer in. We must never underestimate the energy that comes from the creativity and art that creative people put into their art works. It is like bread cast upon the waters – it will return tenfold. The world would be a sad place if we lost our powers of creativity and invention. May we always keep them close by us, and turn to them when the skies are grey – for with our ingenuity and skills we can always turn those grey skies blue again. It just takes time, trust, belief, creativity, and a little bit of energy.
Or is the prompt referring to the energy that comes from food? Vonnegut refers to such energy as comes from the breakfast of champions. Was that really Scott’s Porridge Oats? Certainly used to be – and all those caterwauling bagpipes puffing out their oaten tunes. More foods, please. Cornish Hens and Kedgeree, unzipped bananas, eggs – preferably fresh and free range – boiled, poached, scrambled, fried, or served in various types of omelets … energy from food – oh, I could go on and on and on … caws wedi pobi, cennin a tatwys … tortilla espanola, paella de mariscos, calamares en su tinta … chapulines from Oaxaca … food as a source of energy … wow! And who said the foods had to be written in English?
Mind you, an alternate source of energy is the current news cycle. When not a storm in a tea-cup, sugared or un-sugared, it is ferocious and opinionated enough to set people banging their heads against the walls so the pain will come from an alternate source. And noise demands energy – energy in (and also garbage) and energy out (mainly garbage), and all that rage, fury, wind, despair, blather, generated by written, printed, spoken, televised, radio borne waves of noise. We could start a wind farm if we trapped the blatherings of congress, the senate, the houses of parliament.
Meanwhile, we live in a large house, almost a barn really. Some of our friends call it our hacienda. They are the ones who speak no Spanish and can’t pronounce Quevedo correctly, even though I’ve known them for a quarter of a century. Actually, strictly speaking, most of them are ex-friends now. Many went AWOL when I retired and the rest disappeared, fates unknown, during Covid.
That house has an electric furnace that warms us in winter and circulates cool air, in summer, from the basement (cool) to the upstairs bedrooms (warm). We also have a fireplace insert that burns wood. But we only use that in emergencies (power loss during cold weather or storms) or for decoration (the yule log) at Christmas and over the New Year.
A large house means large heating bills. About ten years ago, we installed a wonderful heat pump that serves the whole house. It heats in winter and cools in summer. It also halves (or more) our electricity bills. Most of the house functions on electricity, hydro-electricity from the dam at Mactaquac, just up the road. No coal-fired furnaces for our electric supply. We do, however, have the ability to connect to a petrol-driven generator. But we rarely, if ever use it and that, too, is for emergency use only.
Otherwise, many of the things we use on a daily basis – computers, cell phones – can be battery driven (when the power fails) and those batteries can be charged in the car (during emergencies) or from reserved chargers hidden away. The car itself is a normal gas engine – nothing special – as is the snow blower. We do not use solar power – nor wind power – but we do have candle power and our fireplace insert can be used for heating food and boiling water.
So there, as a challenge to your lack of clarity, you have a clear account of my many sources of different types of energy. Oh, and don’t forget, I am energized by earing your prompts apart and chomping them into tiny pieces.
Dystopian – how does one plan to design the city of the future in, for example, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, a war-torn African country? There are wars and rumors of wars. What sort of future city does one design in the aftermath of a nuclear war? Bunkers for the elite? Underground tunnels? Radiation free zones? MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – and who would be alive to inhabit one of those cities? The ultra-rich might escape on their super-yacht-space-crafts. But where would they go? And for how long would they survive? And what sort of cities would they build when they got to wherever they were going? From some of the rumors that I am hearing, the multi-billionaires are already building those -super-survival-Noah’s-Ark-Bunker Cities in various parts of our world as it is now. A water world? A dust storm world? A radio-active world? First, define the future, and then we can design for it.
And remember how many times, during and after the first Iraq war, we have heard generals and politicians boasting that ‘we bombed them back to the stone age.’ Just think about that. The stone age. Primitive in the extreme. No electricity, no running water, no regular food supply, no weapons other than sticks and stones, no bronze (that age came later), no iron (that age came later), no medicine, no doctors, no hospitals … think twice before you celebrate ‘bombing anyone back to the stone age’, because that might just happen to you, over the next few years. And remember, if everybody turns off all sources of light, we will be entering a very dark age indeed.
Utopian – Voltaire’s Candide – “everything is for the best in the best of all worlds.” Great. Now re-read the paragraph above. Even if our desired Utopian world avoids a nuclear holocaust and turns out to be the best of all worlds, we are still looking at climate change, rising seas – with the accompanying joy of developing new waterfront properties!??? as someone phrased it recently – over-population, mass population shifts, a dwindling set of natural resources, a scarcity of food and, more important, a scarcity of drinking water, and a tremendous division between the ultra-rich and the super poor. We are also dealing with forever plastics, polluted water, air pollution, the extinction of vital and diverse species, and so many more problems. A Utopia, perhaps, but a Dystopian Utopia, not a total disaster, but a Utopian world walking the plank towards a shark-infested sea.
So, tell me, how do we design the city of the future? A super-charged Noah’s Ark, space ship city, sailing to Planet B because we have flooded Planet A with so many devastating Dystopian indulgences? A deep-earth bunker, or linked set of bunkers, way below the earth, where a select community think they can ride out the coming storm? And what if our planet disintegrates and becomes just another dust cloud, its debris floating in the universe?
I would like to think that my own city of the future would be a small one-roomed, wooden cottage, buried six feet deep, in the peace and quiet of a rural cemetery. But who will bury me, if the world around me perishes and I survive only to fulfill my human fate, and die? I would also welcome a fiery end with my ashes scattered in the peace of the countryside, or in my own garden. Then I think of the wildfires currently consuming large parts of the world and I wonder if any of that will survive. Moreover, can a welcome grave in an enormous graveyard be considered a city of the future? If it can, get planning.
Mors omnia solvit / death solves everything. Indeed it does. And it will solve this question, this problem, and the future city, that I will never design or inhabit, unless, along with Blake, “we build Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.” If England’s Green and Pleasant Land still exists. And from what I am reading in the dystopian English press, there is little chance of that! And anyway, I live in Canada, so what has England’s polluted and dystopian land got to do with me?
Where did your name come from? That seems to be a strange sort of question. First of all, what do you mean by ‘your name’? My surname (or family name), my Christian name, my second name, my nick-name? I have already answered that particular question – to find out, click on this link – What’s the story behind your nickname?
As for my surname, well, that came from my father, and his came from his father, and his came from his father – and so on, ad infinitum. If we go back to the original chicken and egg theory, then we find out that, according to Wikipedia, Moore (pronounced mʊər or mɔːr/ is a common English-language surname. It was the 19th most common surname in Ireland in 1901 with 15,417 members. It is the 34th most common surname in Australia, 32nd most common in England, and was the 16th most common surname in the United States in 2000. It can have several meanings and derivations, as it appeared as a surname long before written language had developed in most of the population, resulting in a variety of spellings. Variations of the name can appear as Moore, More or Moor; as well as the Scottish Gaelic originations Muir, Mure and Mor/Mór; the Manx Gaelic origination Moar; the Irish originations O’More and Ó Mórdha; and the later Irish variants O’Moore and de Mora. The name also arises as an anglicisation of the Welsh epithet Mawr meaning great or large.
So, where did my surname, Moore, come from? Well, you tell me. Because Wikipedia didn’t exactly give me a perfect location for its origin.
As for Roger – well, here we go again. Wikipedia says the following – Roger is a masculine given name, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names Roger and Rogier. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements hrōd, χrōþi (“fame”, “renown”, “honour”) and gār, gēr (“spear”, “lance”) (Hrōþigēraz). The name was introduced into England by the Normans. In Normandy, the Frankish name had been reinforced by the Old Norse cognate Hróðgeirr. The name introduced into England replaced the Old English cognate Hroðgar. Roger became a very common given name during the Middle Ages. A variant form of the given name Roger that is closer to the name’s origin is Rodger. So there you are. Or you could blame my father and mother, or the gentleman who dipped me in the baptismal font and baptized me with that name. Personally, I cannot remember a thing about it.
Of course – wrth gwrs – me being a creative writer with a sense of humor and a parentage that was also creative, my name might have been drawn out of a hat, or found in a Christmas Cracker, or suggested by the slip of paper inside a Fortune Cookie, or discovered in a bottle left by that ubiquitous Welsh or Irish or French or Scottish or English milkman, Moore the Milk. I only know that I am one of the few people I have ever met blessed with that name. Alas, I never met my namesake – Roger Moore aka James Bond aka .007 [respect that dot, it comes from Rudyard Kipling!] – although I have been gifted with those names and that number by several of my acquaintances.
I have a question for you. Recently I purchased a book by Forrester- The African Queen. I enjoyed the movie years ago and thought I would like to read the story. The main actors were great. The book highlighted that it showed what it was like being a female during the war, (1) which when I look back on now is one of its main points.
My question or thought on this book is tied around the library system. When I lived in Fredericton I wanted to give a bunch of books to the library, their first question to me was, “How old are the books? I told her and she said anything over five years in not being accepted. (2)
I wondered about this and the fact that many books in school are being removed, (3) how can we tell how much we have progressed? (4)
I don’t like prejudice but it seems we are throwing out too much. (5) Any thoughts on this. I don’t mind some of the history being trashed (6) because for Canada the consentation is for Quebec and Ontario.
Roger’s Response
(1) It’s also about the role of the nun in society. How do ‘holy women’ function in a male society? It sets some of the many questions we are now being faced with, but doesn’t really give any answers. It’s a long time since I saw that film. I don’t think I ever read the book – the themes might well change in print. They are present (some of them) in The Handmaid’s Tale.
(2) The library system seems to have rules and an etiquette all its own. When I donated books to the library, they accepted some for their collections, but set others up for sale on the book tables by the door. My guess is that certain books are ‘best sellers’ and will be read, others are ‘dust gatherers’ and won’t be. They want the former, not the latter. They also have specialized collections. If the books fit the specialized collections, great. If they don’t, then they hit the unwanted category and are moved on. This is particularly true of the UNB Library System.
(3) This is an entirely different question, and one with very deep roots. It deals, in part, with the question of control – quis custodiet ipsos custodies – who shall guard the guards, who shall program the programmers? By controlling what people read, you control their thoughts. One of the worst signs of this was the book burnings of the Spanish Inquisition (15th – 16th – 17th centuries). The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. (And the Arabs / Moors, in 1609). Prior to that, these people were ‘processed’ by the Inquisition. The original Inquisition was Papal, aimed at instructing the priesthood in Rome in how to interpret the Catholic Catechism. It was corrupted in Spain (under Fernando and Isabelle) by the Spanish Inquisition, a sort of secret police, which worked rather like the Gestapo in WWII. One of their jobs was to ensure that people who had converted to Catholicism, to avoid deportation, stayed converted and didn’t revert to their old religion, even in secret. Another was to ensure that reading material, religious material, and cultural material, particularly after 1527 (Martin Luther and his 97 theses) when the Reformation started, were all in line with the accepted Catholic thoughts of the time. All books about to be published were sent to the Inquisitorial Censor who vetted them and either approved them, or asked for changes. If he (they were all men) saw the slightest sign of dissent or heresy. Don Quixote, Book One, Chapter Six (DQ,I,6), deals with the book burnings of DQ’s personal library. In certain of the States (down south) books are already being banned. A similar ban, in certain States, that touches us closely, is the banning of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
(4) “There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1635)
Descartes expresses this much better than I can. It is one of the major dangers of the age in which we live. How do we distinguish between reality and alternate realities? Which reality is the real reality? What is, or isn’t, fake news? How do we tell? Who do we believe? And why do we believe them?
(5) Another part of the problem is that ‘certain people’ – who don’t believe in science and who exploit people’s scientific ignorance to their own advantage – are willing to destroy the foundations of our knowledge. Burn everything down, they say, and start again. The new starting point is to impose what they believe upon everybody around them. This is a huge and crucial problem that threatens us, as individuals. It also threatens the foundations of our knowledge, as well as the very world in which we live – climate change vs denial of climate change – profits over people, versus government of the people, for the people, by the people. Once one starts asking such questions and looks at the AI systems with their immense persuasive powers and their seemingly uncontrollable spread of Mis-information and Dis-information, then one starts to realize how serious the problem is.
(6) Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it – Santayana (the Spanish philosopher, I think). However, we must, in certain circumstances, adjust our current beliefs to current realities. Immigration is a major issue – as is how we deal with people, like me, who come from different cultures and beliefs? Not everything written in the past suits our current world view.
I have been looking at old Westerns – “The only good injun is a dead one” (John Wayne). Really? I know some wonderful people in our first nations communities and I have taught them and worked with them and have often been taught by them. “Shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” Really? I won’t comment further on that one, without reflecting on the number of automatic weapons floating around in our socuiety. So many people are being killed by them.
All of this comes down to the big question – freedom of information or the release of just enough information to persuade other people of what we believe and what we want them to believe. Power and Control. Knowledge is Power – Michael Foucault. Control that knowledge and you have power over the people. Noam Chomsky has written widely on this – and his books have been banned in the USA. Bertrand Russell too – The Meaning of Meaning, for example, and his establishing – along with A. J. Ayer – of the doctrine of logical positivism – the removal by means of mathematics of all the emotional content of words.
My friend, you have opened a can of worms. Long may they wriggle and squirm.
Why admire a profession? I used to admire the fire-fighters when I was in Spain. Then I discovered that a small group of them were setting fires deliberately so that they could get double pay and danger money extinguishing the fires they had set. I used to admire politicians. Then I discovered that they weren’t always honest, had their hands in other people’s pockets, used their positions to entrench and enrich themselves, and pulled all sorts of tricks to stay in power. I used to admire priests. Then I started reading horror stories of child abuse, abuse of power, negligence of priestly duties. And these things aren’t new. In The Book of Good Love, (Spain, 1330-1343) written by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita details how the celibate priests were ordered in a letter from the pope of the time to give up the ladies with whom they were living (and with whom they had children) to return to a life of celibacy. All fictitious, of course, but also based on a truthful reality, as was the Seller of Papal Bulls (as described in Lazarillo de Tormes – Spain 1554, and published anonymously because of its anti-clerical content).
I hope, with that short selection of potential professional felonies, I have made my point. In brief, to admire the ideal of a profession is one thing. But to admire the unprofessional conduct of certain individuals who ruin the reputation of their own profession is something else entirely.
Therefore, I would propose that we change the title of this prompt from What profession do you admire most and why?, to What professional do you admire most, and why? Now the question can be answered with ease. I most admire those professionals whose profession is a vocation. They do their jobs out of love and not just for money. They are dedicated individuals who put their profession and the people they serve before their own home comforts, wants and desires.
Such unsung heroes abound. The baker who gets u at 4:00 am, arrives at the bakery at 5:00 am, bakes, prepares, and wraps the goods, until 8:00 am when the customers arrive and the shop opens. This is done at minimum wage, autumn, winter, spring, and in the summer when the heat warnings go out and the bakery is a living hell, what with the ovens and the heat dome outside. The teacher whose work does not end in the classroom, but starts outside, when class has ended, and the students really need the TLC that comes from a teacher who puts them before his/her office schedule of 30 minutes student time a week. The general practitioner who does not retire at age 55 to bask in the sun on a Caribbean Island, but who continues his work, until at age 80, he can tend his flock of patients no more, and who then retires with grace, heartfelt thanks, and love from a job well done.
These are my heroes. These are the professionals that I most admire. Not the profession, but the person who performs that profession with skill, hope, love, commitment, and a dedication that reaches out to embrace that specific professional world, whatever it is, and the people who share it.
rogermoorepoet 