WHAT THE HELL ELSE?

The other day someone asked me what I needed that I didn’t have.  I’d like to have an airplane again, but I don’t need one.  A Tesla would be nice.  I like the idea of an electric car that’s quick and cool—and we have a non-controlling interest in the company—but I don’t really need one.

No, what that offhanded question really brought home to me was this:  I’ve already got all that I truly need in this life.  What the hell else is there?  Really.  What the hell else is there?

On the social side, I’ve got a terrific person to love and to share my life with and, wonder of wonders, she loves me back!  Our kids are healthy, they have decent jobs and they too are in fulfilling personal relationships.  One of the delights of my life is listening to my daughter and her husband settle in to chat at the end of their work days.  They giggle and they coo and they take care of each other.  What more could a parent ask for?

On the mental side, I have a creative outlet—this semi-educated rant you are reading—that satisfies me so immensely that I can barely express how grateful I am to be able to think and posit and vent and just share my thoughts and feelings and, with some small grace, perhaps influence others to their benefit.

On the physical side, I get to play basketball with forty or fifty of my closest acquaintances three days a week at the local YMCA.  I get there on a recumbent bicycle that gets me warmed up for the games and saves our environment in some small but measurable manner.  There’s assaying baseball on Sunday’s during the season and hikes with my wife and friends that are equally beneficial to our physical and social and spiritual selves.

My spiritual self is succored by playing and writing music and singing for residents of various convalescent homes a friend of mine works at.  I am more than a little ADD.  One instrument is not quite enough, so I fiddle around with the guitar, the piano, the saxophone and, yes, the . . . violin (you thought I was going to say fiddle?).  Making music is as warm and fuzzy as warm and fuzzy gets.

We have sufficient funds—a non-controlling interest in Tesla, remember—to allow us to travel a bit (we’re getting close to having visited all thirty Major League baseball parks—only two more to go)m/ and help our kids out when it is needed.  The house is paid for and, as I’ve suggested above, t

here are no real material needs that need be requited.

So, what the hell else is there?  Nothing that I can think of.  I submit to you that that is a rather pleasant place to be.

©2017 Richard Paul Hinkle