Officially half a day older

I can now confidently confirm the good news:

I am officially half a day older than I was in Cape Town. Quite obviously, I advanced 11 hours between 24 and 26th December, but it was a wishy-washy can’t-put-your-finger-on-it type of ageing process – what I like to call jetlag.

But, to-day, I can sense, I have aged 11 hours in the proper sense of the word. I woke up in a way that I knew that jetlag was a thing of the past. History, if you like. My bio-clock had finally re-set itself to the NZ time zone, to match the data on my laptop.  If I was a kiddie, then I would have to wait half a sleepy-time less to reach my next birthday! Yay!

I am also officially a New Zealand driver, with licence number DP741524-708! At first I was a bit apprehensive,  because I failed the eye-test on my right eye:

“Just pop down to Specsavers and get yourself an eye-test,” advised my testing officer Ian. “With your membership of the AA at $120, you will get the eye-test of $60 free.” Now how could I argue with such a decent deal? I would have to pop down to the optometrists.

However, when you are told that one of your body parts is defective, a natural concern sets in: What if I fail my eye exam? How will I prepare? Can I practice staring at stuff? But what sort of stuff should I stare at? Even Google can’t help me! I feel a wave of angst approaching, like an inevitable tsunami…

Naturally the purists out there would ask whether I have used the word “angst” loosely and indiscriminately. Do I perhaps not mean “anxiety”? It will depend on whether there is the added element of “hope” or not.

Allow me to explain, and to illustrate the situation: Angst, which is often confused with anxiety, is a transcendent emotion in that it combines the unbearable anguish of life with the hope of overcoming this seemingly impossible situation. Without the important element of hope, then the emotion is anxiety, not angst. Angst denotes the constant struggle one has with the burdens of life that weighs on the dispossessed and not knowing when the salvation will appear.

As an example: An airplane crashes into the side of a remote snow-covered mountain; those passengers that worry about their lives without hope of survival, only face anxiety. In contrast, those passengers who worry about their lives with the hope of survival, but do not know when the rescue party will arrive, face angst.

I guess I was filled with angst, because I have survived the hypothetical plane crash and the Specsavers examiner gave me a green tick. Yay!

As a final “aside”: In Waikanae the optician is called “WaikanEYE optometrists” whilst another practice has the email address  eye @ seekapiti.co.nz