What is maturity? Am I?

Doesn't matter. I'm just now understanding life.

I retired early this year. I discovered a few things besides cheap bus fare and time-to-smell-the-roses.

The world is pretty well established as a tight circle of enslavement. Yeah, you get to quit your job and find another. But try simply stopping permanently. You can't. Rent, mortgage, car notes, parking meters, sales taxes, bank fees, insurance on everything, and health care. Even the homeless have to pay taxes on the $5 bottle of wine. And, pan-handling is a job.

The majority of human beings have to work for somebody or insert themselves into the low/middle income circus by starting a business of their own which, as my son-in-law is discovering, demands an 18 hour day, 6 or 7 days a week.

Retirement is a difficult lemon to squeeze, but I seem to be getting enough lemonade to be able to get out sailing around Lake Ontario for a while and then sitting for a couple days watching the weekend fishing fleet motor out into the sunrise, piddle around all day, then head back into port to have a barbecue. Then, Monday morning comes along and I hear the fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars all yelling their "get outa my way", the commuter trains roaring in the distance, and the brown band of smog begin its daily horizon smudging. Yet there, alone I sit, eating potato chips and watching movies while I revel in the isolation that Lake Ontario now becomes.

Everyone around me tries to make me feel bad because I am just "pissing time away" and not making any money. And I smile because I know something they don't. They can't. Won't. Not until they retire.

I soon learned that most of my views from youth that were way beyond mainstream thought, beyond normalcy, odd-ball ways of thinking... were then and are now correct. The world is FUBAR. Making love with anyone is a good thing. Kissing a 7 year old girl, especially there, is very much good for Her and that much better if I can enjoy it knowing that She will not be hurt afterwards by society and its neuroses.

Aside from cheap bus tickets and creaking bones when I climb stairs, I am celebrating my understanding of life on our planet. Without guilt, I not only can study the pattern of waves from a passing motorboat, but I can appreciate the sight of a 7 year old little girl, Her form, Her smell, Her sound, and Her personality.