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Lawrence Abby Gauthier

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The Westphalia Periodic News

              Louis Kossuth

                (1802-1894)

I’m feeling introspective...

There’s a scene in Culley Jane’s latest novel that I take personally.

In the novel, with her teenage granddaughter at her side in front of a computer to help her pick a good one, Virginia (the main character) is scrolling through a dating site for seniors.

“No more writers,” Virginia says. “They have too high an opinion of themselves. It takes a highly inflated self-image to believe that anyone else would be interested in your every random thought.”

The book, of course, is fiction because the author is married to a writer. Or maybe she doesn’t want to offend me and writes a whole book hoping that I’ll get the message.

But what she says is true, at least some of the time. Sometimes I do think like that.

It started in college in a class on 19^th Century European History. That’s where I first learned about Louis Kossuth, and about his revolutionary speech before the Hungarian Diet in 1848. “Although I am a humble man,” he said, “God the Almighty has chosen Me to represent the cause of humanity before you.”

Sometimes I feel like that, like I’ve been chosen to represent the cause of humanity. I don’t advertise the fact because I’m afraid that people will think I’m an egomaniac and not invite me back to social events, like I’m a Trump supporter or something.

But it’s a great feeling. It’s uplifting to think that way… it’s invigorating to feel like you’re representing something greater than yourself, that your every random thought represents the cause of humanity, because it’s who you are — the me’s and they’s blended into humanity, made in the image and likeness, something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s like getting the kids off to school after you’ve cooked them a healthy breakfast. One day they’ll find the cure for cancer and the world will be a better place.

The truth is, however, I don’t always feel like Louis Kossuth. I’m just as likely to feel like a hopeless sinner, especially when I first wake up in the morning. I learned from the Dominicans that laziness, or Sloth, is a Cardinal Sin. Sitting in my chair with a cat on my lap nursing the day’s first cup of coffee, I think about all that needs to be done, and I feel lazy, like I need to confess.

Winter’s coming. Are we ready? Have I chopped, split and stacked enough wood? We get to the gym a couple times a week where I like to swim, but I should be doing more. The French ladies will be over for a big brunch in a few weeks… I need to clear the patio of my tools. Something is always out of place that would look better over there. But I don’t want to get up out of my chair.

Why am I so tired?

Maybe I have long Covid, or a vitamin deficiency, or maybe this is just the way it is after 76 years of living, going through rough times and good times, raising children, making ends meet. Maybe Newton was right and Leibniz was wrong. Maybe the essence of matter is not motion, as Leibniz said, but is inertia, as Newton said, and that's why God created guilt, the Dominicans said, to prod us along like cattle going up the packing house chute.

Sitting in her own chair, eating an avocado on toast for breakfast, a cat on her lap, too, Culley Jane says to me: “The Vice-Presidential debate is tonight. Are you going to watch it? Are you going to write about it?”

I want to sleep.

There’s so much to do… too much to do. I don’t want to go to work. I want to sleep-in, but guilt prods me into motion.

My office where I work is downstairs. It’s where I write. I call it Plato’s cave. It’s where I imagine that I’m Joan of Arc, driving British bankers from my lands, galloping atop a charging horse in the great cause of humanity! My eyes wide open following fingers dancing across a keyboard, expressing random thoughts.

I love it when I’m thinking that way, even if it’s a mental problem.

I think it’s a good thing for people to occasionally remember that we all represent the cause of humanity, even if it’s just in the way that we curl our little girl's hair before sending her off to school.

Just a random thought.

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