"Lovely day, isn't it?"

There is something fundamentally wrong with people being cheerful as they walk into work extolling the magnificent day outside. The past few days in Ottawa have been magnificent - low to mid twenties (70s for my imperial readers), with a sane humidity (69% today). It is the sort of day you should be outside, not entombed indoors.

So what makes people so cheerful when it is sunny outside and they are stuck inside? Don't they feel a sense of lost opportunity? Of life passing them by as the grind away the nose on their face?

I sit here wondering how many days I will be able to enjoy. How many days I will be able to say, "I lived and enjoyed this day. A day I shared with my friends and family." Or shall I be one of those who on his deathbed will say, "If only I had played hooky. Was turning my back on the this wonderful gift God gave today worth it?" (note, I am literally sitting with my back to the window).

Staring at my monitor, surrounded by gray cubicle walls, breathing air-conditioned air, with blinds closed tight so there is no glare on my monitor, I miss my old view.

Makes me reflect upon the lyrics of Morning Has Broken by Eleanor Farjeon (though made famous by Cat Stevens).

Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play!
Praise with elation; praise ev'ry morning
God's recreation of the new day!


So the day is reborn, but am I? Hmmm … hard to say yes, since I follow pretty much the same routine each day. Is that life? To be reborn each day as Sisyphus?

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. - The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

NOTE: My mental and emotional states are fine, I am just musing on the injustice of being indoors working while the beauty of life is just outside my shaded window.

Image nabbed from here.

Comments

Well this is ironic, because it is beautiful where I am too, I am stuck at work at a desk with high partitian walls, and my back is to my window as well. The window has wooden blinds in order to block out all light and glare to my screen. We must be kindred office workers. BTW - do you relate to Dilbert comics??
Richard said…
Tsk! Tsk! We are kindred spirits since we are both blogging from work. shhhh.

I probably relate to Dilbert more than most because I am a software developer and so much of the management / engineering interaction is so true.

Management is a completely different species from engineers - who are different from human resources, who are different from sales people, etc.
Barbara said…
You have my permission to leave work early and go out and enjoy the perfect summer day. It is a nice day here in DC too, but not like the one you described. Now that I am eligible for retirement, I find myself taking huge liberties with my work schedule that I would never have permitted myself before. Our lifetimes do contain a very finite number of days and only a small percentage of them are that nice. So, go home, NOW!
Hi Richard:

Thanx for your visit. One of the things I want is that my pics make people comment. It means people see these images and they have the need to say something: a good comment or a good critic. I can see you are peruvian ´cause you know the name of same typical food.
Poverty in Perú hasn´t an only face (there is not only andean people in poverty). In Trujillo you can find people whose ancestors where rich or owners of the half of Trujillo but now they have to work.
I hope you can visit Trujillo, for you can find an interesting contrast you don´t have to go to San Isidro and then to El Agustino. Here the contrast is in downtown.

Greetings from Perú.
sorry my terrible english.
Richard said…
barbara: Thanks! I suppose I could manufacture a headache, but the truth is, I am not very good at lying. No, I'll just sit here and let my life pass by, then on my deathbed I will cry out, "oh why, oh why didn't I listen to Barbara!"

edento urbanita: I am not Peruvian (but my wife is). Your English is fine (if only my Spanish were half as good - I have been married 10 years and can barely say good morning)
Just me said…
Playing hooky is the only way to go... hehe. Although most days I'm at my desk which also faces away from the window. Funny how we're all set up the same.
tin-tin said…
it's a lovely day outside. why don't you open the window and have a peek on the outside world. or why don't you go outside for a minute and take a breather? :)
vina said…
i'm also stuck in an office 5 days a week, for an average of 10 hours a day. i wouldn't even know what's happening outside unless i take a peek from my boss' office window (where there is a magnificent view of the sunset by the way).

i just feel out of touch with the outside world sometimes, if not most of the times. there's nothing like feeling free and alive beyond the corners of an enclosed room...
Richard said…
tin-tin I cannot open my windows. I can go for a walk if I Like. I have a pretty nice nature setting around my work.

vina: I know most people work longer hours than I. I think we all want to free ourselves from the drudgery of routine work entombed in a sterile building.

Actually I have been surprised a number of times by coworkers who actually claim they wouldn't know what to do if they didn't work. A Common comment would be, "But there is only so much TV you can watch." Aaarghhh! Are there people who are so depraved that their idea of not working is watching TV? sigh.

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