Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Trouble With Immortality

In my mind I am a frequent world traveler. My Passport bears the stamps of every exotic place on the planet. My leather duffel is worn and soft with age. It has never been checked. So great is my expertise that I am able to pack for a month and put it all in that satchel envied by the likes of Indiana Jones and Bond, James Bond.
Not only do I travel extensively, in my mind I am sufficiently daring to pack all of my possessions into a larger bag which is likely checked and move to, say, Jerusalem or London or Paris or San Francisco or, perhaps, Brooklyn. In my mind these things happen.
In real life -- the life that awakens me each Monday through Friday morning at six and pushes me breakfast-less into my car and onto the freeway to join the thousands of other not quite conscious commuters with uninspired destinations rewarded by insufficient pay checks -- I do think about packing it up and hitting the road to live someplace more exciting or prettier or cooler or warmer or at least different.
But then I look at that stack of free address labels on my desk and I'm immediately torn. Shouldn't my liberation wait until I use them up?
I mean, these labels represent important causes: Doctors Without Borders. The Anti Defamation League. The Nature Conservancy. The Alumni Association of Arizona State University. Amnesty International. Project Angel Food. The Salvation Army. The International Campaign for Tibet. Working Assets. The March of Dimes. UNICEF.
And without my asking, more labels arrive on a weekly basis from equally essential organizations.
If I don't support those worthwhile causes financially, it seems that the least I can do is use up their labels.
So I guess I'll put my Passport back in the drawer and sell the leather bag on e-bay.
After all, we do live forever, don't we?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would love to donate to worthy organizations, but then there are so many. Instead, I have to donate my time and money to my own family. I can't let them take a back seat. By the way, I do appreciate receiving all of those sticky labels - it saves my hands from writing return addresses on all the enevlopes containing bills I have gathered.