And Up Again And Down Again And Up Again And….
What am I waiting for? I feel like I’m waiting for something. I always do and I always have. If I can just make it through this…pretty soon things will change….once I turn this corner…..won’t be long now.
I’m not miserable during this waiting period. I’m just…anxious. Anticipatory. But what is the goal? Am I waiting to have money? To be in love? To be comfortable? To be content in my career? Will I know when I’m there? Am I there now and I just don’t know it? Is this very moment the moment I was working towards? In always anticipating, am I failing to appreciate where I am now? Am I taking this time for granted?
As I walk around alone at night, I look at people’s houses and a warm blue light streams out of so many downstairs picture windows. People watching little boxes. Dead eyed and comfortable. Safe. Distracted. I do it too.
Is that wrong? I’m tempted to say they are wasting their lives. Are they? Who’s to say? Why is that a waste? What is not a waste? We have but a limited time here. What determines whether we’ve made the most of it?
Is it reliant upon how successful we are in our chosen vocations? Is it dependent upon how many good deeds we do? Upon whether they name a wing of a hospital after us?
Does it depend on how much we have traveled? Is the number of stamps on our passport indicative of the quality of life we have led? Is it how much we learned while here? Are we to have been scholars? Students of existence? Study the history of us in order to fully appreciate our present? Or is studying the past a waste of time? Will we regret studying the past? Is that time we could have made more of in the present? How?
Where should I be right now? What should I devote my every waking moment to?
Should I be saving the Earth? Protesting and yelling and only eating organic? Our purpose for living on this planet can’t merely be to save this planet, can it? Why? So future generations can keep saving it? That seems vexingly cyclical.
Am I here to please a God? Should I be lying prostrate in prayer? Flogging myself and asking for forgiveness? Or, in the absence of a God, should I be decadent? Should I be drinking all the time? Should I be trying every drug in an attempt to expand my mind or dull the monotonous pain of existence? Should I be trying to fuck as many women as possible? All day, every day? Does the tally at the end of my life correlate with how well I lived?
Or is my goal to find one good woman? To learn her every secret and know every inch of her body? Is my legacy our love? Is my legacy the children we create? Is everything I’m thinking just a genetic trick to get me to breed? Am I a pawn in nature’s game?
Regardless of what brought me here, or why my presence was deemed necessary, I don’t wish to appear ungrateful. And I expect no clarification. As I am writing this to no one at all.
