Downhill

Today's Friday sermon was delivered in English at the mosque I attended. It started with a wonderful line to the effect of how the new year was a welcome reminder of our approaching ever closer to our return to Allah (basically saying we're closer to dying, in case you don't quite get the point.) The charming bluntness of the reminder of this ultimate reality was a wonderful contrast with some of the standard rhetoric I'd been listening to during the day, at some training I'd been sent to attend, about how we're always making progress and getting better at what we do, and how we never really can peak.

I'm puzzled by how easily people accept the 'getting better all the time' model. I mean it's nice to think that you do develop and progress in certain ways, but I don't see this at all as some kind of 'given' about experience. I can think of some fairly obvious examples of folks I've known personally deteriorating both in personal and professional terms - and I say this with no sense of somehow blaming them for their misfortunes. And, of course, I can easily think of quite a number of ways in which the current version of myself pales in comparison to the younger Brian. (Where did all that energy go to? What happened to the hair?)

In fact, I get a degree of satisfaction adjusting to the sense of myself coming down the mountain and looking back at its sunny peak.

I should add, though, that the very fine sermon continued with a touching meditation on how we should strive to emulate our beloved Prophet - peace be upon him - in the days we mercifully have left to us. And I suppose I'm contradicting myself in divorcing such emulation from the notion of getting better. But somehow I do: the ultimate 'stretch goal' (notice how skillfully I employ the appalling jargon) is wonderfully unattainable which makes the striving even more worthwhile.

Not terribly coherent, I know, but it's been a long, long day.