MAQUOKETA, Iowa -- You won't recall seeing me. For decades, I spent my days as one of those smug, anonymous, bland-faced government employees you hardly notice, one of the steadily employed, well-meaning men and women who rarely have doubts about the value of their work. It was a good life.
We all carried photo identity badges. (Mine was garlic-scented to ward off those looking for a bit of my blood.) Most wear their badges around their necks. You see them on the streets over the noon hour. A quick glance tells you they are a part of an elite group of people. The badges practically shout, "I belong. I am gainfully employed. I am somebody (and you might not be)."
I quit the club a few months ago, exchanging my badge for the freedom to retreat to my place in the country and be a wild-eyed, longhaired recluse. My aim has been to lie low and hope no one asks for a number to a cellular phone I don't possess.
The transition has been easier than I expected, and being a man without an organization has been more than a little instructive, if a bit self-indulgent. I have been given to thinking about my life thus far, contemplating how it all will end, and coming to appreciate how little it all means.
Speaking of how it will all end: In a report published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (next time a kid comes around selling magazines, ask him about that one), scientists predict that in approximately 7.59 billion years, the Earth will turn to cinder and be enveloped by our ever-expanding sun.
I'm afraid we won't be here for the big event. Before popping the cork on another billion years, the sun will expand to such a point that all of the water on Earth will boil and evaporate. Only year-round Floridians will be around by then, flinty old curmudgeons sitting around the pool cheating at cards, not noticing the heat.
Just before Easter, in one of my infrequent forays into town, I was standing in line at the local farm store when I heard the unmistakable peeping of baby chicks. Behind me was a tiny, bespectacled blond girl, proudly holding a hole-punched cardboard box containing five adorable chicks, two brown and three yellow.
"What will you do with them when they get bigger?" I asked.
"Give 'em to my grandpa," she said. Following her with his cash ready, Grandpa just smiled. So did I, though I felt clueless and stupid about the lives of little kids and their chicks. She looked in her box and saw soft and cuddly; I saw moral and ethical dilemmas.
On the way home, I listened to Ella Fitzgerald sing, "And when my life is through, and the angels ask me to recall the thrill of them all, I shall tell them I remember you." Or something close to that, anyway - and I was back to how brief it all is. Grandpa's DNA will live on in his adorable grandchild, but those chicks will be on a plate by Christmas.
Reflecting on a life lived and ascribing some meaning to it is a self-indulgent madhouse inhabited by street-corner philosophers and preening impostors, so I'm going back to work. I'm not sure what I'll do. I've always wanted to play third base for the Cubs, but my lateral movement isn't what it used to be, and it's likely my throws to first base would look like pop flies. I'll start checking local newspaper ads, or publish one of my own: "Frmr gvt burcrt sks mnngfl emplymnt. Hrd wrkr. Lmtd skls."
In the meantime, I'll be out spreading gravel on my long lane and taking an ax to trees felled by a long, tough winter. And I'll watch flocks of geese as they vee north to the lakes of Minnesota and Canada, seeking water that remains cool well into the depths of August and September. They fly over by the hundreds now, chatting the entire trip in that mournful way they have. We won't see them again until autumn, when it's still warm here, though not as warm as it will be in about a billion years.
Kurt Ullrich writes essays from his home in Iowa. His e-mail is whisperhollowfarm@msn.com.