Ah, The Weekend! LDoS

I've often noticed that the joy of time off seems proportional in some sense to the difficulty of the work that preceeded it. The last day of schooling with finals over, a difficult task at work completed successfully, or some speech, paper, or distasteful home task well done and now comes "Miller Time". Marketing people are actually quite good at distilling some of our basic natures to their purposes and those old Miller beer commercials catch the feeling pretty well.

So the rough week at work was ncompleted, and the year at school for our 15 year old completed as well. If the "last day of school" (LDoS) could be bottled, it would be a product very easy to market. It seems that is one of those feelings that is "age and condition of life specific" that would be impossible to fully reach again in adulthood, but the weekend has been a hint of that. The level of youth, health, optimism, lack of experience in the ills of life, still feeling generally free of responsibility for themselves and others; linked with the wonderful completion of "that year is completely behind me and next year I begin again with a fresh slate" makes LDoS one of those life experiences to be savored.

Like all human experience, that LDoS is of course significantly illusionary. You certainly CAN die when you are in your teens. You certainly can create all manner of problems that may dog you for the rest of your days--habits, addictions, attitudes, damaging relationships, teenage pregnancy and other guilt / fallout from the victory of hormones over morality, injuries, crimes--the list is endless of course. In the way of nature however, when you are in your teens those downsides are quite far from the mind. You tend to feel invincible, your future is long with potentials unbounded, and the very fact of not really grasping the potential for "life changing ill" makes the experience what it is.

Socrates said "An unexamined life is not worth living". Interestingly, the result of that examination is often significantly that one becomes "consciously incompetent". You begin to know what you don't know. The more one learns, the more one realizes that the process of learning is always begining with "unconscious incompetence" (not being aware of what you don't know); to "conscious incompetence"; followed by "unconscious competence" where for some task or piece of life you "do the right thing", but may no longer be aware of how it was learned or why you do it.

Rosseau, and I suspect many liberals would arge that the LDoS feeling becomes inaccessable with examination, and the person is no longer "authentic". What Socrates and a conservative would see as "not worth living", the Rosseau and the liberal see as "not really life". The categorization, the judgment, the realization of inadequacy, the realizations of impermanence--all conspire in their minds to destroy "the human experience".

Knowledge and experience certainly change us, but while it is impossible to capture the "same exact experience" of the LDoS we experienced in youth, it has seemed this weekend that there are aspects that are even better. Having completed over 50 years of "life schooling" with at some level of decent grades in matters of earthy importance, weekends like this and the prospects for some other experiences of "Miller Time" in the coming weeks of summer has made this weekend so very enjoyable.

The examined life is VERY much worth living!