ENJOYING OURSELVES WITH LEE MARVIN

The guy next to us in Cochrane looked like Lee Marvin, so I am going to call him Lee. If you don’t know who that is, watch Paint Your Wagon. If you can find it.

Lee was driving a 2006 Tiffin, which looked like it came out of the factory yesterday. Behind that was a motorbike mounted on a large bracket, and behind that a Subaru SUV with two kayaks on top. The whole show was absolutely pristine in every detail. When we went for a bike ride one evening he wasn’t there. When we came back, there he was, polishing the bugs off the front of his moho. So I talked to him.

I discovered that he had been a military helicopter pilot, that he had flown off HMC Provider out of Esquimalt, and that he had been doing the RV life full time for five years now. He and his partner were on the way to Alaska, and thereafter back to the States via British Columbia. I did not ask him any philosophic questions, but he gave me two bits of wisdom anyway. Maybe I looked in need of them.

The first wisdom bit: What’s your hurry? He said that when I told him we were going to Moose Jaw the next day, a distance of 700 k or so. He said his preferred driving time was 4 hours a day, and suggested, vaguely, that anything more was a failure to understand the RV ethos. I thought he looked over at our equipment when he said that.

His second wisdom bit: Enjoy yourself. He said that when I asked if he was tired of living in a motorhome after 5 years. “Everybody here,” he said, waving his hand around the park, “just wants to enjoy themselves.”

Those were Lee’s two nuggets, freely given.

As for the first bit about hurry, he made a good point. We ain’t twenty any more.

As for the second point, enjoy yourself, that started up a string of questions in my head which I will now list here. I won’t attempt any answers because one of our Wednesday Winer crew said that there are no answers. Don’t know whether to agree with that or not, but just listing the questions seems easier.

So. Herewith some questions that flushed out of my brain like birds out of a swamp. Thanks Lee.

“Everybody here is just here to enjoy themselves”.

Isn’t everybody just here to enjoy themselves?

What about a life of service, like King Charles is supposed to live? What would have happened if the minister had said, at his coronation, Your Royal Highness, just enjoy yourself. How would that have gone over?

What about being useful in the world, something like finding a cure for cancer, or taking out the garbage? How does that line up with “just enjoy yourself”?

What is meant by “enjoy yourself” anyway? Does that suggest that you should ride around in a moho and not engage anybody or contribute anything? Does it mean not work? Does it mean that you should maximize pleasure and minimize pain, as the Epicureans said?

Doesn’t “enjoy yourself” necessarily imply that you are enjoying something other than yourself? You go to a concert, you are enjoying the music, which is something other than you. You go out in nature, you are enjoying nature, which is something other than you. Doesn’t “enjoy yourself” mean exactly the opposite of that, namely enjoy something that is not yourself?

If the former is not just semantic quibbling ( God forbid), how can you enjoy yourself if you are contained within your own shiny moho? What are you supposed to do, just go down the road and look at something else? Only have superficial, temporary relationships? Does not enjoying oneself involve sustained involvement out of the self, with something or somebody other than the self? And doesn’t the RV life militate against that?

And stuff like that.

I googled “enjoy yourself”. Apparently it is the most frequently used phrase on the internet. There are numerous songs entitled Enjoy Yourself, the most famous being by the Jackson 5. I watched it and it made me laugh. A rap guy called Pop Smoke has a video out with the same title, in which he suggests that sex is the way to happiness. And more odes to hedonism.

A few days after our encounter with Lee, we passed him going north around Red Deer, he in his pristine Tiffin, we in our lamentable little car. His plan was to go north, which he was doing; ours was to go east, which we were not doing.

I’ll never know how his day turned out; if he found a good lake to put his kayaks in, or a good road to ride his motorbike on, or good people in the RV park to chat with. As for us, through no intention of our own, we have found ourselves by a lake, among family and friends, enjoying ourselves for a few days. An unforeseen gift.

As for all of you, go forth and enjoy yourselves. It’s the long weekend and that’s what you’re supposed to do on long weekends.

PS

Tunes keep popping into my head…Have A Good Time, by Paul Simon, and Faster Horses, by Tom T Hall, which I already shared with Winer Jan. I’d put them on here, but you wouldn’t listen to them. Google them if you wish.

Enjoy yourself.