Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [62]
I savor seasons. I enjoy a good, cold winter with plenty of snow. I don’t want a wimpy winter. I don’t want winter to last into March but I’m disappointed when we don’t get enough cold weather to freeze all the ponds solid or enough snow for skiing and sledding.
It struck me, as I drove with less enthusiasm, that Christmas and New Year’s were really over. They’d joined the memories of our past.
We all spend more time preparing for pleasure than we do enjoying it, but still, it’s disappointing that we cease to take pleasure from so many things before they’re over. Often when I’m in the middle of doing something I’ve looked forward to doing for weeks, I suddenly realize the enjoyment is over before the event. I’m thinking about what’s next.
At a party I’m thinking about going home to bed. In San Francisco I’m thinking about getting back to Connecticut. Monday, I think of the weekend and by Saturday night I’m looking forward to Monday.
At dinner, I often get up from the table before the meal is over to make the coffee because I’ve already started thinking about dessert.
This morning the first thought of the approaching spring was depressing to me because it reminded me, not of warm weather, but of the passage of time.
I like spring because, among other good things, it means I’ll soon be able to get back to my summer workshop, but please, don’t rush me. The idea of spring now, in the middle of winter, does nothing but make me think of how short life is. It seems as though I just left my workshop, went to a few football games, did my Christmas shopping and the New Year’s party. I’m not ready for another summer so soon.
Maybe we’ll get a foot of snow next week that will put these depressing how-time-flies thoughts out of my mind.
It’s difficult to get time to pass at the right speed. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I think time will never move on to morning. Some days, on the other hand, I can’t hold time still long enough to do all the things I want to do.
The trick is to get a good balance of activity and inactivity in your life. You need high points to look forward to and back on but you need plenty of time in between for not doing much of anything. Not doing much of anything can be the greatest pleasure of all, if you know how to do it.
The art of living well has its geniuses just as certainly as music, painting and writing well have theirs. The greatest Old Master in the art of living that I know is Walter Cronkite. You know him as a respected newsman but believe me when I tell you his ability to live and enjoy life exceeds his greatness as a journalist. He fills all the days of his life with events, any one of which would satisfy most people for a year.
Walter works and plays at full speed all day long. He watches the whales, plays tennis, flies to Vienna for New Year’s. He dances until two a.m., sails in solitude, accepts awards gracefully. He attends boards of directors’ meetings, tells jokes and plays endlessly with his computers. He comes back from a trip on the QEII in time for the Super Bowl.
If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh five hundred pounds. He disproves the theory that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I wish now I hadn’t driven in to work this morning and gotten into this whole mess.
The Truth about Lying
Lies are a part of life. In spite of the admonitions we get beginning in childhood to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the most honest people among us don’t live by that standard. It’s too hard.
The Truth About Lying 133
“How does this look?” a woman asks her husband as they’re going out the door to a party. If he’s lucky, he genuinely likes what it looks like. If he doesn’t he’s in trouble because either he has to lie or tell the truth and start the whole evening off on the wrong foot. He not only has to lie but has to add to the deceit by lying enthusiastically. “It’s okay” is not enough.
It’s at least partly the woman’s fault for asking the question in the first place. Samuel Johnson put his finger