Eyes open

I hate when I get stuck in a mortality loop. That strange loop of thought revolving around the fact that one day I will cease to exist. It gets me thinking about what I’ve done with my life. Or rather, the effect my life has had on the lives of others. I hope I’ve been entertaining at least.

This is not a depression driven observation, it’s just a simple fact that I will die someday. You will too. Unless the cyborg shell body you’ve been working on in the garage is perfected and you can download your mind’s essence into it before your physical body dies.  Then I’ll re-state; you and I will die someday.

It’s not dying that has me worried. That’s just a simple absolute of life and I can’t do anything about it so I’m not worried. What I am concerned with is how I lived that life. Did I suck the marrow from the bones of life and reveled in every sunrise? No. I’m pretty sure I haven’t. In fact, I think I’ve spent most of my life complaining about how cruel Monday’s are like some real life Garfield. (I do like lasagna though).

Everyone tells me that your life, everyone’s life, is what one chooses to make it. I agree with them on a certain intellectual and philosophical level. But intelligence and philosophy alone won’t cook your soup or keep you warm in the winter. You need money. It’s as certain a fact as dying. A life in the pursuit of something extraordinary seems to be a life of poverty and financial uncertainty. While you’re karma may be good, your stomach is growling because all you had to eat for the last two days was grape-nuts and an orange rind. Plus without insurance that scrape on your knee cap from the river/hiking trip to gain oneness with nature will turn in to gangrene and you’ll die for no other reason than you couldn’t obtain some freaking Neosporin because you have no money.

So sure, I agree that life should be lived and a wasted life is a sad thing. I also agree that freedom comes at a cost and often times has a higher price tag than working everyday for the corporate machinery that keeps us shackled to a desk while artists paint and poets dream. I can’t afford the freedom I’d like.

I hear it all the time, “Do what makes you happy”. But happiness, real soul quenching happiness, is out of my financial reality at this time. I can’t afford happiness. I don’t think it’s an excuse. I really don’t. The reality of life is just that. It’s real and you just can’t start over. You’re path has been set by all your choices to this point and you can’t suddenly hit the brakes. A new life takes money. Lots of money. That’s the truth no one will tell you.  Happiness is indeed expensive. Risk is expensive. Chance is expensive. And if you don’t have the stake money, you can’t play. So you have to sit in your cube, in your booth, in your car and wonder why other people get to be artists and you get to be a claims guy.

I’m just being a realist about it. A pessimistic realist. There is no do-over. No extra lives available. There’s no escaping from who you are. I just hope who I am will be enough for the rest of my days and I won’t wind up in a mental institution blathering on about how I could have been, or should have been, with a bitter resentment of the universe’s cruelty burning in my eyes.

I hope I figure it out soon. This complaining is really boring.