Justice and Mercy

I've been spending a lot of time lately attempting to find a way to secure an adequate source of steady income, having had the final mooring line loosed from my erstwhile long-term employer a year ago. I've also been spending a lot of time on multiple visits to multiple government offices, gathering and distributing forms and acquiring stamps of approval and permission, speaking with various clerks and their supervisors in a series of inter-related vignettes that--if it weren't for the almost universal courtesy, decency, and helpfullness I've been pleasantly surprised  to find among the bureaucrats--even Kafka would find too bizarre.

I've also been spending quite a lot of time in clinics and hospitals undergoing various tests, examinations, and conversations with doctors.

All of this activity, including many hours of waiting, can hardly be called fun. It's all necessary for one reason or another, though, and it's all connected in the overall plan of trying to acquire enough income to keep myself fed, housed, and amused, and trying to ensure that I'll live long enough to spend it.

So far, although the income part is going to require more effort and more time, the health part is looking good. Considering much of my lifestyle over the decades, and the fact that as of today I'm two years into what I choose to consider middle age, the results to date are so astonishingly good that I'm sort of living proof that there's no justice in the universe. There's a considerable group of bemused doctors, nurses, and technicians out there looking askance at me, and their number grows with each set of admirable test results.

G.K. Chesterton said,“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.” I haven't been a child for quite a long time now, and I'm damn sure closer to the wicked than to the innocent end of the scale. I'm unaware of having done anything much to deserve mercy, and don't really much believe in a source for such mercy anyway, but I'm certainly not complaining.