What do you do when there are no more surprises? When you look forward to going to a concert or a game to add excitement to your life? What happens when you achieved the dreams that you had as a child? Why does it feel as if life has passed me by that the daily grind of being a parent and worker has left me seeking something else? Why have I needed that ego stroke, which is so empty and unfulfilling? Is it due to the fact that I am a selfish and self-involved person? That is only part of the answer. I feel the need to do things on the edge. To push myself, but fear controls me even as I try to seek excitement.
Money also drives me to the depths of despair. That is so cliché. What else could it be? I want whatever I can’t have. I seek to be seen as special and unique without having to do the work. I want to lie about and have things come to me. Dude, I am trying to live and make something in this world. I am like every other Joe, and I hate that fact. I don’t want to be the same as the rest of the world, but I am unwilling or unable to make the changes necessary to set me apart from the pack.
I’ll keep going to work, making my car and house payments, working on family issues. Is that all there is to living? No. There are some people that set themselves apart and others that don’t. I have set myself apart in my small pond and it’s okay, but I want something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. No one outside of maybe my wife can see this meaningless battle raging in me head, but for all its pettiness, it is my one defining characteristic. So what? Other people define themselves by doing.
To see my son going for his dreams is fantastic. He has challenged himself and is meeting all of his challenges. My only fear for him is how these events may change him in ways we will never knowuntil it is too late. When you get in life and death situations, there is no way that you will not be affected. I don’t want him to be adversely impacted by combat experiences that are beyond my control.
What is control? How do we fill up our lives so that we feel as if we are doing something worthwhile? Why do I need to perseverate on such idle chitchat? I guess it is to make me feel as if I am alive. No, it only shows me that after 49 plus years that I have in no way made the transition to what I thought was adult thinking.
I still have that little kid’s voice in my head that thinks that being an adult would fix all the problems and that all the answers that I was seeking would be discovered. Nothing has been delivered, and I am still driven by tactile sensations that overwhelm any rational reasoning that adults are supposed to possess.
The idea that humans are rational is a joke. Rationality is an ironic absurdity at the height of its power. You only have to look at Camus or Sartre to see that there is no rhyme or reason to the world order. You may prefer James Joyce or William S. Burroughs. Murder in the modern era is the keenest example of the meaninglessness of life be it by state sanctioned slaughter as in the Iraq war or your garden variety family bludgeoning.
It brings me back to the concept of adulthood and how everything is going to be all right once you are in control of your life and away from the clutches of your parents. As an adult, one is inundated with all sorts of choices that can bring pleasure or pain. Ironically enough, most pleasurable experiences come with their own brand of pain that is meant to reconcile our pleasure seeking, but in many cases only drives the pleasure seeker to greater depths of despair or anguish. This is the puritan in me. Another reason so seek the solace of gratification is to overcome the mendacity of everyday living.
None of these ideas are new or exciting. They help me to scratch at the surface of living. As you can see, I am no brilliant mind that forges new intellectual frontiers. The next great novel will not come trippingly off the tips of my fingers. Nor will I be compared to any great philosophical thinker. I am a plodder who scuffles through life and is only able to find momentary lapses of reasoning that give me clarity. All too often, I get in my own way and the way of others when I open my mouth or my computer.
There is no mistaking my motives as I jot these precious words. It is to give meaning to what has become my life. The bitterness that overwhelms me, the languid, dreariness that suffocates me and leaves me angry, drive me to write, but is my ability at work to lose these grotesque reflections that saves me from myself.
There is comfort in work’s absolute and detestable monotony. The petty squabbling and downright nasty collegial and parental confrontations give teaching its flavor. The stark curriculum and blatant governmental underpinnings add to the litany of adversarial attacks on the oldest of all legitimate professions.
Where is truth? To hear my wife talk, I am on the go all the time. To hear my own self-talk, I am the laziest bastard alive. Veracity may lie somewhere in the middle, but the reality is that truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Once an event has passed, the truth is a transitory illusion that takes on a life of its own; therefore, it can never be known individually and once it reaches the collective consciousness of society it spins its own web of deceptiveness; moreover, it is the reaction to the event and its aftermath that creates individual perceptions and leads to a new form of truth. Ask any politician after they have been attacked on the internet or anyone who has had their financial identity stolen and has to live with the truth of their good credit being destroyed, which may in turn destroy their personal life as well.
I reread some of the passages and they make me cringe, but in my most private moments they are my present truth. Their transitory nature invalidates their veracity and scope while pointing out their petty arbitrariness. That is the nature of my existence.
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