Around The Corner
The pleasure of good company
For me, the pleasure of good company far outranks any form of entertainment. I so enjoy listening to a friend or stranger tell about his or her latest venture. Most of the time that experience shared does not entail relating about some fantastic experience like mountain climbing or other grand feat but more likely it is simple, such as asking me, "Have you tried the Chocolate Lover's Trash flavor at Brusters?" You can bet that we will probably decide to go for some!
Yet listening to someone tell me about their dreams is probably best of all. In addition, I can listen well while licking a Chocolate Lover's Trash cone. I learned a long time ago, before I became a Senior, that Seniors who find joy in their sunset years are those who look for the opportunity of continuing to make plans for the future, like planting cabbages.
Have you ever read the words of Michel Eyquem De Montaigne about his cabbages? I absolutely love what he wrote, "I want death to find me planting my cabbages." A simple thought for the French Renaissance thinker. He wrote many essays, as he evaluated life, but he simplified it for himself with cabbages. I would bargain that he also thought about how his planting might feed someone else after his demise.
Please do not get me wrong, I am also pleased to hear about my mountain-climbing friends adventures. In fact, their bravery astounds me. However, for most of my Senior-age friends, like me, those experiences are usually a very past adventure. However, they are not unheard of. In fact, even I have experienced more exciting undertakings since the age of 70 than I ever did in previous years. Some of those were pluses that occurred during journalistic endeavors, such as flying in a glider at 5,000 feet with a fantastic quadriplegic pilot. However, my husband stood on the ground, his cell phone in hand with 9-1 dialed and ready to dial the last 1. I also have an up on most of my senior friends in that I still can derive great interest in listening to my younger interviewees tell me about bungee jumping and such.
I suppose I am a rarity but another good pleasure for me is in looking through friends' photo albums or watching their home videos, even if I do not know most of the people I am looking at. I can recall I even enjoyed a friend's old home movies that were as jumpy as one of those long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs that Tennessee Ernie Ford used to talk about. Why? All those pictures and videos tell me much about my friend. If the person is older and we are new friends, I enjoy looking at what kind of fashion they were into wearing, what kind of vacations they enjoyed. Yet it is the same with my young friends. Young people still hang onto each other for photo taking and they still make crazy faces or smile as wide as the ocean, even though the well-pressed blue jeans are now blue jeans with a ragged look.
Long before I knew that a writer lived inside me or that I would ever interview anyone, I really, really, enjoyed discovering people. I was a curious kid. I always asked many questions about them. Good prep for later years I found out.
For me, the finest time spent is listening to people's experiences. Thus, my choice of good company is a person who does what he or she enjoys, but is not selfish about it. Joy is for sharing, be it Chocolate Lover's Trash ice cream or even cabbages. §
Betty Kossick has been a freelance writer since 1971. She lives in Ocala and considers herself a poet at heart. She can be contacted at bkwrites4u@cfl.rr.com.
