It seems like yesterday
But it was long ago

One of Random Magus’s favorite books is Siddhartha. She has a great blog post pondering the metaphor of the river in Siddhartha and her own struggles against the tide.

She writes:

Yet I have always found myself opposing the river, maybe some of the disquietude in my soul can be blamed to not relinquishing myself to the the flow of things and letting things happen the way they are supposed to be.

I added a comment there, which I’m incorporating into this blog post. Siddhartha has long been a favorite book of mine as well. I've read just about everything Hesse has written as well as authors that were influential to Hesse, like Gottfried Keller.

I remember reading somewhere, but I don't remember where, that Hesse said you should not read anything he wrote before he was fifty, and you should only read it after you were fifty.

Siddhartha comes close. He wrote it when he was 45. I'm now 48 and I understand the longing to stop striving.

Against the wind
We were runnin' against the wind
We were young and strong, we were runnin'
Against the wind

It's interesting, just before reading this, I was over at Kellyology's blog where she did one of those online quizzes about burnout. She scored 74%. I hit 90%.

I'm sure that plays in there somewhere.

Back to the image of the river, I've found that there are times that I feel like flotsam on a river. Tossed about, sometimes getting stuck in an eddy behind a rock, sometimes drifting through slow water, but always moving.

The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
I found myself further and further from my home
And I guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was living to run and running to live

As I read Random Magus’ post, Bob Seger’s song, “Against the wind” wound its way into my thinking.

Against the wind
A little something against the wind
I found myself seeking shelter against the wind

Today, we are going back for a second look at a house about three minutes from Kim’s father’s house. It is a small house in the woods. It is a family house. The family had lived their since probably the fifties, and it still has a lot of a fifties feel to it. Both Kim and I saw things in and around the house that reminded us of the houses we grew up in.

Well those drifter's days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out

Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind
I'm older now but still runnin' against the wind
Well I'm older now and still runnin'
Against the wind

When this move is all done with and we are settled in where ever we end up settling in, hopefully the stress will decrease. Perhaps I will be more like Siddhartha. At the beginning of the book, we find him In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the
Boats.

After all of his travels Siddhartha finds his way back to his childhood friend. Siddhartha tells him, "I'm travelling. I was a rich man and am no rich man any more, and what I'll be tomorrow, I don't know."

Siddhartha settles by a river ferrying people across. Where will the river lead me? Random Magus? Kellyology? Others that I’ve met in the blogosphere? How does this relate to parenting? How does this apply to the political process in our country today? What will we be tomorrow?

It was getting late into the night and time to head off to bed. But before I did that, I followed one more link.

Firefox responded with its message, “The connection has timed out”