RedGage

LIFE: As You May or May Not Know It
[A Yuletide Epistle from MrBill]

Life, or living, oft times seems to get in the way of one or the other...

Has it always been that way? Or does each generation newly stumble upon the discovery and declaration - "Life used to be simpler then!"

Coming to the end of our calendar with its winter holidays filled with chaotic stress of preparation followed by the joyous gatherings of kith and kin, along with the promises of a new year, causes many to ponder ... "life".

From a biblical point-of-view, life began on Day 3 with plants: "Let the land burst forth with every sort of grass and plant. Let there be trees and fruit." So it was, and there was evening and morning of the third day. - from Genesis 1:11-13 Things were good and the creation of life continued on into the 5th day - fish and birds - and the 6th day - cattle and wild beasts, oh ... and mankind too.

So, once-upon-a-time life was simple ... as time was simple too. Life, as mearsured by time, which was pretty simple in its own right, as time was black and white, I mean - day and night; but over time, time keeping became more complex, and thus life became more complicated.

For a long time there was just "life", and for the most part "just life" was "just work". Sometime around or just after the Industrial Revolution another innovation arrived - time off, or leisure time - which began a distinction between between life and work-life.

Not happy to be "just life" anymore, non-work-life renamed itself "home-life" and now life was divided into two parts. This evolution of life - dividing, disecting, defining - would continue as more and more "lifes" were discerned. Home-life would be splintered into married-life for people that coupled, and further into family-life for those that reproduced. Singles not wanting to be left out opted for a personal-life. And some folks from both married-life and single-life chose to also have a social-life and even a sex-life!

Social awareness would foster community-life, and personal awareness a spiritual-life. And if all these lives weren't confusing enough, technology would eventually blur the whole mess such that it was hard to distinguish between cyber-life and real-life!

And ... in spite of all these many variations, choices, and alternatives ... today, many people are still told, and in no uncertain terms, to "get-a-life"!!!

Well, I for one do have a life ... or three or four, I often lose count, it might be a dozen or more ... and as many of you noticed - I have been absent the past month, while some of those personal-family-home-work-social-lifes conspired to keep me away from the new-age-techno-online-cyber-life.

However, it is not unusual for me to escape, in one fashion or another, during the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This shoulder-season is often prime time for me to take a journey. But this year was a different adventure - house-sitting for my parents so they could take a little journey of their own. In the process I was able to surprise them with a bit of remodeling, renovation, and a fresh coat of paint while they went on a vacation!

So, as my many lifes reshuffle and deal the next hand, I am back online for holiday time. I am physically exhausted, yet somehow refreshed. I return with many tales to share and troves of photos to post. I hope all you - my online-cyber-life friends of RedGage - are enjoying your own myriad lifes and that they are aligned for a most Merry Christmas with the ones you love the most and for a wonderful and happy new year!
Cheers to all - MrBill (-;