NEED THREE LIFETIMES. .

       I wrote my History MA thesis on Samuel Wait, the first President of Wake Forest College (now University).  In many ways the choice was 'ready made': I needed a topic, one that did not require lots of travel (my budget was limited), the school needed his manuscripts catalogued, they paid for that work, and he was reasonably interesting.

    Working against huge obstacles, Dr. Wait and his associates succeeded in establishing in the 1830's what was then called a 'manual labor institute' in the forest of Wake County, N.C.  During the pre-Civil War economic crises,  the school survived (barely) primarily because of the President's "begging" journeys across the state.  

    In the years leading up to the War, sectional tensions  within
the country strained relationships with family members in Vermont (from which he had migrated years earlier).  Afterwards,  as an elderly man, he resumed an affectionate correspondence with a cousin.  As he approached eighty, he commented that he needed several lifetimes to accomplish all the aspirations that still held his interests.  I was 29 at the time I was doing this research and writing but that comment caught (and still holds) my attention.

    In a similar vein, I recall reading the story of North Carolina author, Thomas Wolfe,  being seen at a large municipal library, pulling books from the shelves, frantically leafing through them, replacing that volume with yet another, all the while muttering and swearing.  When asked what was bothering him, he replied to the effect that there is so much to know and so little time in which to know it. (He died in 1938 at 38 years of age !)

     In an earlier post, I noted my long-standing affection for books.
Well, I bought another one (three, actually) last Saturday.  One was Christopher Buckley's Losing Mum and Pup, about the deaths of his parents, Patricia and William F. Buckley.  Early on, he cited his father's frequently repeated admonition that "industry is the enemy of melancholy."  While too much busy-ness can also be the 'enemy' of healthy reflection, awareness and life-balance, there is merit in his observation. 

    While I am neither a Buckley, Wait nor a Wolfe, at 75 years of age, I am increasingly understanding their ...what (?)...'lament', 'complaint', 'marvel'.  There are simply too many things that I want to do, see, be, accomplish; people to spend time with; places to go; ideas to explore; and, I do not have another 75 years.  Maybe William James's observation was correct: "I am just now getting fit to live."

     Or, as the original Satchel observed: "Don't look back; they might be gaining on you."

      Satchel