Journal 2024-06-02 Sunday morning.

Stephanie would be turning 60 years old today, if she had lived. My sister died less than a month after her 28th birthday, in late June 1992, from drugs and alcohol; she's been gone now longer than she was with us. She had an amazing love for life that was sadly overshadowed by other things - a difficult relationship with our mother, and a fascination with dangerous new experiences that led her in the wrong direction. It was through Stephanie that I first met Georgianne when we were in high school, and it was after Stephanie's death that I re-connected with Georgianne and eventually ended up co-parenting Bunny.

So, June brings with it the summer weather, and also thoughts of life and death.

What I don't plan isn't planning.

F.A. Hayek observes in 'The Road to Serfdom' (ch. 3) that big-government advocates like to use the term "planned economy" to mean a CENTRALLY planned economy, implying that a free-market model "within which the various activities would be conducted by different persons according to their individual plans" is really no plan at all. For them, only a "central direction of all economic activity according to a single plan" is worthy of the name "planned".

This is a good example of the two views of knowledge as either distributed or concentrated, as put forth by Thomas Sowell in 'Intellectuals and Society'. And in fact I was reminded of the anecdote Sowell cites near the beginning of the book, about a humorous verse that was written about Benjamin Jowett of Balliol College at Oxford:

My name is Benjamin Jowett.
If it's knowledge, I know it.
I am the master of this college,
What I don't know isn't knowledge.

Only centrally-controlled knowledge is deemed to be "knowledge" in this view, and similarly, only centralized planning is true "planning".

Journal 2024-06-02 Sunday evening.

Those Thai curry frozen meals that you can get from Trader Joe's are good - quite spicy, as frozen meals go - and I've been having them for lunch most days for the past couple of weeks. It's sometimes a struggle to peel the plastic film off, but it's worth it. And then I went to the nearby Thai place for dinner Saturday night - green curry again - so I think I've finally hit the Thai curry saturation point.

June brings the summer(ish) weather, and so more opportunities for outdoor exercise in inviting conditions. I'm also making this a month to re-commit to creative activities, partly in honor of Stephanie's memory.

The challenge is to embrace the exuberance, the adventure, the wildness - but to avoid the dark and dangerous paths that lead to death. The unlived life is not worth examining, but a life cut short is a life unlived.