EXISTENTIAL DREAD AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: MY NOT-SO-SECRET IDENTITIES

HIKING WAKAMOW VALLEY, SASKATCHEWAN

"All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."

(WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S “As You Like It”)

Throughout my adult years I have auditioned for a potpourri of roles on the real-world stage. Toiling on pipelines, I tramped through Manitoba and Saskatchewan grasslands, Alberta foothills, British Columbia forests, and North West Territories tundra. Busking on street corners, I strummed my tunes and drew my pencil portraits in Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Morocco. And betwixt these pipelines and busks, I was a swimming instructor, a high school English teacher, and a university psychology professor.

During my lifetime to date, the fates have been exceedingly kind. Nowadays I am a professional hypnotherapist, a ski instructor, and a writer. My hypnotherapy practice is thriving, I have been offered employment at my local ski hill, and my last book, QUEST FOR BLACK BEACH, has been nominated for the ARLENE BARLIN AWARD.

‘Tis now in the autumn of my life I have come to really realize that my time left to strut on the world stage is definitely finite. In anecdotal fashion, it seems I am attending age-old friends’ funerals much more frequent than in years past. Until now, I have been delusional, thinking I have had infinite time to accomplish anything and everything, with nary of thought on my exit stage left. Like the last of my vampire friends told me, “Without death, nothing is urgent.”

FACTOID: Whether I win the ARLENE BARLIN AWARD, my immediate plan is to be a full-time professional writer. To put into play, I need to write and write and write and write and write and write to make it work -- pun intended! As far back as high school I have dreamed to be a writer, but fear and common sense have kept my writing as a vocation rather than an occupation.

I shall explain. I live a blend of existentialism and evolutionary psychology. I have the free will to determine the course of my life (existentialism), and my sole purpose for being is to procreate and continue my species (evolutionary psychology). Exercising my free will, I have chosen a life of middle-class misadventure, surrendering to my innate urge to create more of me. I chose to have children I chose to provide for them a decidedly normative lifestyle. Instead of living the solitary life of a starving artist, I landed jobs as a high school English teacher and part-time university psychology professor. I chose not to write; I chose to teach. Such employment prompted me to keep in academia, significantly enhancing my socioeconomic status throughout my adulthood.

In furtherance thereof, my existential dread is still bringing out the best in me. Starting in my undergraduate university days, I had ofttimes dreamed about being a ski instructor. This past Christmastime I enrolled in a downhill ski instructor course, and now when I don my ski boots I do so as a certified ski instructor. Yes, my existential dread is still bringing out the best in me. Existential dread, in the autumn of my life, has sea-changed my winters.

Alas, my progenies have grown and gone which offers me considerable time to suffer existential dread. Even though I am 73 years old I am still working, moiling daily in my employs. Serving contracts for two provincial ministries, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Corrections, my job is to vet 18-year-old high-risk young offenders, both socially and academically, as they are released from custody and returning to the community. (Each evening I am still at the helm of my private hypnotherapy practice.)

My work keeps death from knocking on my door. It has been well documented that more people die in their retirement years than in their work years. I am just betting on the odds that the longer I stave off retirement, the longer I stave off death.

Even though I am 73 years old, five days a week I am still recreationally sweating in two different gyms, one for weight training, one for martial arts. With regard to my weight training, I am a staunch proponent of the overload system; with regard to my martial arts training, I am a staunch proponent of Muay Thai.

Going to the gym helps me to stay hale and hardy. Going to the gym allows me to continue hiking and diving and busking and skiing. And, maybe even more important, I know I go to the gym to look good!

Hmmm. At 73 years of age, I am still innately manifesting evolutionary psychology. As stated previously, according to evolutionary psychology, my only purpose for being is to propagate and continue the species. To attract a partner to propagate, it helps to look good!

And there you have it, my not-so-secret identity of all work and all play. I go to work to stay alive; I go to the gym to look good. For certain am at once, an aficionado for my work and my play, and thaumaturgy, performing for an audience of me, myself, and I.

EXISTENTIALISM and EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY. 

Life could be a dream ... sh-boom ... but the burden of accountability to oneself can be a bitch .. sh-boom sh-boom! 

TO LIVE IS TO SUFFER (the skinny of Zen).