You will probably never hear me talk about life on this hilltop any other way than I have. I love our hilltop and feel that we chose our property exceedingly well twelve years ago. The last five years of living here full time have done nothing but reinforce that view (pun intended). But now something has changed about life on the hilltop. Imbedded in any hilltop living is an overt or subtle sense of superiority. I always struggle with that because as a fervent liberal, there is a wish for anti-elitism. I found my method to that in saying that unlike our hilltop breatheren to the immediate north, we do not live in a gated community. We have an electronic gate at the base of the driveway, but it remains open at all times. As evidence of that commitment, this week while seeking out what ended up being a GFI problem in our garage circuitry, I flipped at the breakers and in so doing, inadvertently closed the front gate. I can’t remember when it was last closed. I had to ask Kim to remind me of the codes that govern the gate from the keypad at the entry. She did and I punched in the code that specifically opens and keeps open the gate on a permanent basis. God knows, now more than ever, I do not want or deserve to feel high and mighty behind my gated entry.
I suppose if I have to start living at street level, now is a good time. The repaving of our road is now mostly complete, save the replacement of the mid-road reflective markers. They did a beautiful job, with special mention for the interfaces. The driveway leading edge is concrete and now has a totally level entry/exit from concrete to asphalt. The crew chief told me today that they replaced a 1 and1/2 inch road surface with a 3 inch road surface, estimated to have a twenty year useful life…certainly longer than I will need it. They also handled my black handmade river rock border with great customization. The asphalt now hugs my border in a most pleasing and aesthetic way. The crew chief actually told me how much he preferred my natural rock edging to the other more serious and formal edging that exists around this enclave. That made me feel good about my efforts last year to order my two tons of pineapple-size rocks and then hand imbedding them one by one for the 224 feet of frontage along the street.
I suppose that if I was truly committed to living without a gate, I would have it removed, but what would be the purpose of removing a piece of expensive hardware that would likely only decrease the house’s resale value. And there you have it. What true liberal worth his salt would think like that? My years of poking my red friends had me always suggesting that they were all closet liberals, but now it looks more like that I am a closet conservative. Go figure. That may be my ultimate hair shirt to wear.
My acceptance of my street into my life is very real and feels quite complete now. I bought four bags of fine black cinder to put along the stone border, but now I ask myself why I need all that. Since one can never have too much rock in one’s life, I’ll just stack those bags up on the side of the garage and save them for a rainy day. In the mean time, I will refocus on other aspects of my street level garden. After all, Mike and Melisa’s daily walk ritual goes past our frontage twice and may be the most regular appreciation of our succulent garden. They deserve less, not more, things to criticize about my life choices at street level.
In addition to my street-level view of the world, I am also drawn to saying less about our world from my hypocritical perch on this hilltop. I have seen countless Trump-Trade investing articles of late and have chosen to not read a one. To begin with, I dislike investing more than any other ex-manager of large investment boutiques ever has, so why would I care about those articles. While I have made a few profitable investments in my day, I would be hard-pressed to exalt my investment prowess. I am happy to have been an earned income guy, especially now that Trump plans to stop taxing us based on income. What a deal?! Whatever is the opposite of Scrooge McDuck, that is my best carton caricature. I do not want or like spending my day counting my money. I would much rather never having to think about money. Perhaps that’s an overreaction to my years of professional life and may be that’s my reflection of my world view of caring too much about others less fortunate. Who can say?
To me, the important thing at this point is to do several things. First and foremost, I believe we all must set our own ethical compass on the world regardless of how its collective views shift around as they appear to be doing right now. Just because the world wants to care less about human suffering is no reason for me to care less. What it may indicate is that I need to tone down my recital of the obligations that I feel the world should have on these subjects and understand that I need to better respect everyone else’s views on how they perceive their obligations. In other words, I best remind myself to keep more of my opinions to myself. This has nothing to do with ethics, this has to do with social convention and my fervent belief in individual freedom for people to think and believe as they wish. That also means that they do not need to suffer my differing opinions unless they ask for them. Standing up for what you believe is quite different from shouting your views into other people’s faces and insisting that they listen to your opinions. I also believe that a fundamental human obligation is to try to be considerate and tolerant of others and their views. Quite frankly, this is something that has largely diminished in recent years and it is increasing unpleasant to witness. I happen to observe it far more on the right than the left, but my perspective may be skewed. Intolerance is a bad thing regardless of which direction in flows from.
The legendary shining castle on a hill, Camelot, supposedly existed in the 12th Century. What we know for sure is that that comes after the Dark Ages, as they were called, and yet before the end of the Middle Ages when the Renaissance or rebirth of cultural and intellectual life, took place. Mankind has and must continue to persevere through the setbacks to its progress and recognize that things don’t always move in a straight line upward. Sometimes you have to come down off your hilltop and work at street level.