On Monday January 13, 2025 I was driving on Cedar Road when my mind drifted to a question about targets. To my knowledge, I have never used a bow and arrow or thrown a dart. These tasks are associated with targets. I can count on one hand the number of times I have used a gun for “target” practice. The point of these activities is to throw or shoot at something. The something is a predetermined standard that says if you gather your attention, harness your emotions, and control your kinesiology then you might measure up. My thought about targets was mainly a question asked to myself, “What am I aiming at?”
This is not a rhetorical question but a significant one as a 51 year old. My energy and focus have waned in my later years because of domestic transitions, familial reckonings and other serious distractions. Facing daily tasks for work are “on” target because that is a simple equation. Someone needs work done and I am best suited to provide that product. Ok, easy enough. But I am contemplating a more existential Camus like idea. What is the target I am trying to identify for the rest of my life? Is it an overarching legacy that my daily actions will culminate into some day? Is it a specific problem I am trying to solve before I shuffle off this mortal coil? Or is it a efficiency of activity in old age? Regardless of the why I am consumed with the what. I feel like the madman across the water the fool that once had a good part in the play. Now is the time to ascertain the last target so that the work, education, experience, pain and suffering does not leak out diffusing into ether. The contrast is now upon me that all that has been should be harnessed into hitting the target. A well defined bright red target beckoning my last efforts as I grab the boat on the reef. I can see it very well the target that waits for the madman across the water.
Albert R. Hartley
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Leaves of Grass
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