Kenneth Edward Hart

A New Jersey author

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Measuring Life

July 10, 2017 by Kenneth Hart

What are the measurements of your life? Are they measured by progeny? Are they a measurement of style? Is the measurement the result of an intellectual contribution? Is happiness an indicator of your measurements? Is life to be measured at all? Where does one find the correct measuring stick?
Many turn to religion and philosophy when seeking feedback on their lives. Measuring is after all a form of feedback that is based on a widely accepted graph. The old workman’s saw is “measure twice and cut once.” I am searching for a method of measurement. I have little idea of what it will be.
I can eliminate some obvious candidates. Having never biologically fathered a child, I can remove that aspect of things. I have made attempts at being remembered, but if someone asked me why, I would be hard pressed to come up with an answer. I tell myself that art lives forever, but I think that is because I know that I will not. I am increasingly aware of my mortality and so I look for a way to measure my life.
How does one go about this task? Why is it undertaken? What satisfaction exists in the answers that you find? Does it change anything outside of your own perception of who you have been and who you are?
Perhaps your own perception is enough but it does not feel as if it will be enough for me. My writing is an exploration and I am looking for more. Jackson Browne wrote and sang, “I’m holding out my only candle but it’s so little light to find my way.”
I want to take measurement of my life and I don’t know how to do it. My wife says that this is because I am dense and I do not disagree, but even the dense need answers. When these answers are memories, one knows that you are close to living in a past tense.
The temptation is to list accomplishments. I was a teacher and I helped people. I think that I am quite proud of that. I am a good husband. I look for beauty in the world. I have learned to prefer gentle as opposed to harsh. It doesn’t feel like enough. I have poured my soul into my books and songs. It still does not feel like enough. One might ask if anything would feel like enough and I have no answer. I do not feel as if I have done enough.
I ask myself why I need to measure anything. Is it my sense of competition? I would be humiliated to think that is what it is. I know that what I seek is a deeper understanding. I do not know if it is there or if I have the ability to grasp it. My angels are older. Sometimes a new angel flashes her wings in front of my eyes, not unlike temptation. I know that my needs have changed. I have learned that time changes needs.
This process would have been called in the past “taking stock.” But I am unsure as to how to measure, how to count stock. And so I hold out my only candle.
Answers come in eye dropper portions. Preferring gentle to harsh is one. Maintaining gentle while others are drawn to harsh is an argument with my nature. I am only up to the challenge sometimes. One of my favorite words is sometimes, and now it seems to haunt me. Do the allure of previous passions haunt us with regularity? Does this regularity make them any more surmountable?
In his sermon, The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Martin King preached that the words given to a creed were far less important than the deeds that one accomplished in service of this creed. I don’t know how to measure the power of my deeds, if, in fact, they had any power at all.
How is power defined? How is it best used? What are the measuring sticks that I should use to guide me?
I have so many questions and so few answers. I guess that the answers that I do have will have to be sufficient. Still holding out a candle-

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