Overheard at Table 1: Quote by Eric Hoffer

 

 The quote just completed on https://cryptograms.puzzlebaron.com/check2.php

 

"Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do. "

— Eric Hoffer 

... took me awhile to understand it, but then it became clear, when I thought about this Saturday, in which I spent from 9 in the morning until 7pm just now replacing the cabinet doors in the kitchen.   My wife had been working every weekend for the past several weeks on refinishing the cabinets and my job is to put the new hardware on the doors and mount them.  It should be an easy job, but "guy things" are rarely easy for me, and so, it took all day, preparing the new hinges, installing them, mounting the doors, adjusting them to the correct height and depth, and putting on new doorknobs.  

All the while I am frustrated, as always, because every weekend, I am taken away from the things I want to do.  We're to be going to Ireland next month, and she hasn't even looked at one thing she wants to do there, and so I need to find the time to arrange every single thing.  So I'd like to be looking at Ireland.

Also, I'd like to be working on my songs, songs that I'm composing on the computer as well as the acoustic guitar.  I also need to practice the songs we are playing at church tomorrow.

And so ... as always, another weekend is spent doing what my wife wants to do and not what I wish to do.

If I complain (as I am) it sounds like petulant whining.  She will, of course, have the best argument: that her projects are to improve our home and are something that everyone in the house benefits from.  My writing/creative exploits are something that only I benefit from.

And for that, the sacrifice is justified.  But it does not make the quote any less salient, or poignant.