A Milestone

One Hundred

A number almost always associated with some important milestone:

In games and sports, a hundred points or runs or goals

In distance, one hundred miles or kilometers seem a significant distance

A hundred dollars still seems a substantial sum of money, unless you are in line for a bonus from your Wall Street partner.

A century of history or a grand old age for a person or a building.

This is my hundredth post. I thank Pak Idrus for the impetus he gave me to start posting and the many others who have encouraged me to this milestone .


Writing Hopscotch has led to some introspection. As I do so, the word complacent seems best to describe my current status.

For most of our lives we have been urged to avoid complacency and we have passed that lesson along generation after generation, usually because of its connotation of indifference. Even using its better connotation of self-satisfaction, complacency always seems to be an attitude to be avoided.

That’s good and necessary advice for those stages in life in which we are preparing to be responsible members of society and the years while we are expected to be productive, as career workers and professionals, as responsible partners, spouses or parents, as dynamic individuals creating and pursuing challenges and goals.

What then when someone has fulfilled those expectations? What if there’s no need to find new challenges? What if you have reached the limit of your health and physical ability? What if your body prefers a pleasurable stroll to working out on a treadmill promoted as some vague hope of postponing the inevitable?

It’s not that one then sits around in mind-numbing lethargy.

Quite the contrary. It’s the exhilarating complacency of having made all the hard moves in the game and of confidence in being able to handle anything that may come up, of the freedom to feel satisfied whether you choose to opt in or opt out.