Finishing Well

I have been in christian circles for too long. I can not remember if the phrase finishing well is christian slang or biblical or just a phrase for use of the common english speaker.

But anyways, it is a principle that applies across the board. I want to tell you a story.

A couple days before my grandpa was checked the hospital for the last time, I was unemployed and he offered to pay me to help him make an Excel Spreadsheet of all his files, etc. We sat together in the odor of sickness, he was feeble, he legs barely working. He had started using a cane that day. The next day it was a wheelchair and after that he would never walk again. I amazed him with my Excel prowess and he genuinely wanted to know how to use the functions, and type this in here and that in there. He was an eager, dedicated learner until the very end. We made some progress and he gave me money and I wanted to refuse it. But he told me no. but i argued, I had too much fun for it to be a job. He told me jobs should be good times and insisted that I take the money.

I think that some people give up. They say, I only have a few more weeks living in this apartment with these roommates, I will stop living in the now and dream about the future. Or they say, I have given my two weeks notice, I no longer care if I keep my files in order. Or they say, I am moving soon, I no longer care about my neighbors so I will stop saying Hi to them. Or maybe they say, I am 78 years old, I am sick, I may not live very long, I will stop trying to learn new things, I am too old for new tricks.

Finishing poorly is very tempting. Laziness and daydreams of greener pastures are sweet and addictive candy.

A candy that will rot your teeth and your insides. Maybe thats a little dramatic. But maybe it is not. But it makes me think of Ani DiFranco song that references old people cursing at the walls and pulling out all there stuffing.

I don't want that to be me. I want to finish well at my current job, with my current housemates, with my current neighbors. While it might all be for naught. (My grandpa never used Excel again), it will be for integrity, for keeping my brain juices alive and circulating. If I can finish well now at age 24 in a small thing like quitting my job, perhaps I will have built up stamina for finishing well in the final sense of the phrase. I don't mean to be moribund.

But so many doors are closing but its not quite time for new ones to open. Closing doors is an exhausting business, but so is walking into new ones.

Therefore I am going to go to sleep now.

Good Night, Blog. Good night, Helicopter circling above.