The nature of freedom. How curious that the real meaning of life (Ha) comes down to such apparently trivial things. I was sitting at the dining room table, one of my two favorite haunts, a word I use carefully here, when I heard a hideous sound behind me, as if a creature were in some kind of death throes. Instantly I knew what it was: Dexter Dog was throwing up something really nasty on the living room rug. This was not a new behavior or sound. Dexter throws up nasty yellow stuff a lot, so my first choice was this: turn and look to see whether he is on the rug or the hardwood floor. If I turn and look--oh, an important consideration--Mary is not home. I am alone with my thoughts and actions. If I turn and look, I will immediately have another choice to make: to act one way or another, responsibly or not.
Well, since the wife (my mother, Alice, God rest her soul, hated it when my father, Louis, God rest his soul, referred to her as "the wife," when he was talking to a friend; as in, "I'll have to check with the wife first"), okay, since Mary wasn't home, if I find out Dexter has indeed thrown up, I will have to decide whether to get up, go into the front room and deal with the offending substance. Or, I could imagine that I hadn't heard anything and simply leave it to be discovered later. I hate cleaning up rugs after such accidents, if they truly are accidents! But I passed the first test. I turned and looked. Dexter had indeed thrown up on the rug. "Turn around," the nasty, red-suited, horned little figure said in my left ear. "Such things happen all the time. She'll (the wife) never know that you knew and did nothing. These stains happen all the time. You were in the bathroom. It happens all the time! Besides, she's better at cleaning them up than you are."
Crap! I passed the second test. I pushed myself up from the chair and table and went to see. Indeed, there was the offending yellow stain about the size of a half of a dollar bill. Not very big. It would sink in and leave a stain of sorts, but no one will know about the failed action, the deliberate refusal to check on Dexter and clean up the small mess, even though it will be difficult for me to get the towels, the aptly named Resolve, and get down on the floor on my rheumatoid, painful, creaking, swollen knees!
Anyone still with me will know I did it. The point is that it occurred to me that our real freedom and humanity consist in not giving in to such petty impulses as to refuse to "clean it up" because it is easy and comfortable and I can get away with it. "Let Mary find it!"
It's a trivial matter, why am I going on about it? Well, I suspect that such trivial matters are what defines the difference between Heaven and Hell, and the nature of the humanity we choose to live out (I read Dante and take him seriously, after all.). Francesca has a choice, a moment in time in the Comedy where she can either act or refuse to act in a certain way. Francesca's moment is tragic in it's consequences, but her action in that moment, to kiss her brother-in-law or to refuse to give in, is the moment when all of Hell opens up beneath her, for her and for Dante. Hey, this is Dexter and a rug. It is also a choice to act responsibly or not, to turn away from my comfort and perform the unpleasant task before me. The wife will never know, and no one else is here! Presumably.
It occurred to me in that moment that one ought always to the best of one's ability to be aware of what the moment brings. We can either sleep through our moments (I really, really didn't want to quit reading and go clean up after Dexter!) , or we can be aware of what time and real human freedom actually mean. I really wish I hadn't thought of this. Being awake in the universe is such an arduous thing.