Tuesday, July 08, 2025
ESSAY - IN THE AGONY OF MY ECSTASY
BY DONOVAN BALDWIN
I have had the good fortune to have had what is referred to as a classical education, as well as a practical one... both as a degreed accountant, and as someone who has worked with his hands and body. I have lifted, tugged, pulled, carried, sweated, strained, ached, and fell into bed exhausted. I have also earned my bread wearing a tie, sitting at a desk, occasionally with feet propped up and chair tilted back.
I have been both the boss and the worker bee.
I have scratched to get by, eking out pennies, ecstatic when I found a roll of dimes in the parking lot of a grocery store, because it meant I could buy my family food, and, at other times, I have made so much that I didn't worry about how much there was in the bank today because there was going to be more tomorrow.
A few lessons I have learned?
You never know what tomorrow will bring. Be ready to be anything you have to be... to do what you have to do. Never take good fortune, or misfortune for granted.
All YOU can do is keep striving, trying... the fates will do what they are going to do.
That's what the practical education taught me.
The classical?
For one thing, that most other humans have been through part or all of what I have, and not to assume that I am alone in my agony or my ecstasy..
Also, however, and important to me, I have learned that humans can create beauty even while striving and in conflict and afraid and worried and without hope... and THAT beauty helps others bear the burdens that come with being human.
I have been both the boss and the worker bee.
I have scratched to get by, eking out pennies, ecstatic when I found a roll of dimes in the parking lot of a grocery store, because it meant I could buy my family food, and, at other times, I have made so much that I didn't worry about how much there was in the bank today because there was going to be more tomorrow.
A few lessons I have learned?
You never know what tomorrow will bring. Be ready to be anything you have to be... to do what you have to do. Never take good fortune, or misfortune for granted.
All YOU can do is keep striving, trying... the fates will do what they are going to do.
That's what the practical education taught me.
The classical?
For one thing, that most other humans have been through part or all of what I have, and not to assume that I am alone in my agony or my ecstasy..
Also, however, and important to me, I have learned that humans can create beauty even while striving and in conflict and afraid and worried and without hope... and THAT beauty helps others bear the burdens that come with being human.
NOTE: So thoughts partly inspired by the novel, The Agony And The Ecstasy (1961), a biographical novel of the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, by Irving Stone.
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Labels: donovan baldwin, education, fate, Irving Stone, The Agony And The Ecstasy
# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 9:10 AM 
