genot

The soul of a man is a strange thing. It can create the most beautiful music, art, and poetry, and yet has the capacity to commit the most hideous acts. I've seen the heights that a person can go to, and also beared witness to the lowest depravities a man can sink to.

These thoughts haunt me this morning. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's Rosh Hashanah, but recently I'm haunted by the faces of the doomed from my past. This isn't a "Christmas Carol" sort of haunting, it's more of a "there but for the grace of God..." thing.

As I ponder the cup of coffee steaming on my desk while I write this, I wonder how things have ended up as they have. All the job opportunities that have come my way that offered financial security, also carried a risk to life and limb. In fact, a job I turned down three years ago has opened up again, because the candidate who took the job, just lost his leg.

There's a word in Dutch, "genot" which doesn't translate literally into English. It's the good feeling you have after a pleasant experience. I don't think I've ever experienced "genot". When things go well for me, reality comes crashing down on me like hounds through a door.

Life isn't bad for me, I'm by and large a happy person, I have security, I'm well fed, have a roof over my head, and I want for nothing. However, I seem stalled in a perpetual holding pattern, determined not to be, what's the word, comfortable.