The kids are a growing, Missus has been ill, and I have noted a couple of horrible crashes along the highway that we travel on to get out of our neck of the wilderness that has taken more than one life in the stretch of a mile or two and left others in the balance. Death feels like it is hovering close to the place in which I live. It is a heavy feeling. Little ones have come to us recently in the form of grandchildren, and I cannot help but worry for their future, and for the hope of their lives ahead to be long, and happy. It is a deeper place in me where the knowledge is kept that is mindful that with the good comes the bad, with life comes death, and with pleasure comes pain.
Pile on top of this, I have come to a point in life where I need to go to work somewhere, doing a regular job, and supporting my family. I have no particular specialty. But I need to find something to do, and to spend my time away from the darlings I most treasure my time with. This is hard. It is difficult as hell. I value the time I have with these people, and with my wife. There is not a sum of money that equals this value. But there is a necessary sum. So, what am I to do? I am trying to thing where I should apply to spend my time. Where can I go to apply myself?
These feelings are harsh, and depressing. They are heavy. They sure don’t combine well. But here they are, nonetheless. I feel as though I have been hollowed out, and my insides are spread on the ground in front of me, exposed and raw, and somehow, I am still in the shell, looking at it all with confusion, and vulnerability. This is me, becoming an old man.
There is nothing I can do to control what happens in life. I can only ride this great piece of dust in the eternal sea of vast nothingness that comprises the majority of our universe. It’s as though we could ourselves remain unfound among the gunk on a slide under a microscope, just a broad universe hidden among a billion more next to trillions more under a cell among thousands in a sample, unfindable, unnoticeable, and unscalable. In this, I learn to enjoy the moments, to feel the little blisses, and to be a part of something so small as my life hidden among the mass of it all. Where in all the greatness of it all, I am happy to be able to enjoy my little piece and make this little joy among what conspires against my every hope for it. It’s not just contradictory, but my hope is in contradicting it.
So it is here, I say goodnight. Happy contradictions.