All the Times

When was the last time you cried?

Have you blocked it out? Have you never? Or at least it’s nothing you’d admit to?

However, can you recall the last time you smiled? When you laughed last?

I think to some extent we all hope and pray for a life less ordinary, not thinking as we do that less ordinary may not always be positive. We crave action, adventure, love, lust, passion, fame, fortune…All the while thinking that when we get them it will ultimately lead to satisfaction, the satiating of some primal thirst, our idea of happiness.

After some thought, I think that this might be a misguided way to demand drama, to call for misfortune. The most troubling piece of the human condition is its addiction to fickleness. We are junkies for stimulation and agitation. We are quick to leave what’s comfortable and content for the mere empty promise of a thrill. When that thrill fails us, we are then left cowering with regret.

Again, when was the last time you cried?

Was it because of someone else? Perhaps it was. Even so, it likely in no small measure the indirect terminus of decisions that you yourself made. Decisions that came about because you weren’t happy to begin with, you shunned contentment and went out on your own, with the name of exploration on your lips, but perchance something very different in your heart.  

Remember this the next time you feel that phantom of the rambler try and take your hand. Seeking you when times are not necessarily bad, but even simply the mundane. It will whisper that things can be more exciting elsewhere. It pours lies into your waiting ears, making you forget that what you now have was at one point everything you ever wanted. And maybe still is.

The person that seeks respite from a life without trouble will undoubtedly find it.. It’s an unfortunate fact that we have to take the bad with the good, otherwise the good would be the mundane, and become lost in the everyday. Recall that whether great, horrible, or indifferent, all the times of your life matter. In an incalculable and cosmic way, the sum is greater than the parts.

There, now you’ve cried for the last time.

Letter to the World

Before you read this, it might bear some explaining. Right now I am in the midst of writing one of the most difficult things I have ever undertaken.

                My idea was to create a letter to all the people that have impacted my life, for better and for worse. Then these essays were to be combined and saved as a bit of a legacy for the day when I am not around any longer.

               

                Ambitious, certainly. A bit macabre, perhaps. A bit over the top, definitely. However, the thought of not being here for the people that I care about most, the inkling of leaving something worthwhile, or important unsaid chills me. I want to get it all out there, down on paper, as best as I can articulate it, so they too have something to hold onto.

                Which brings me to what follows; this is the section that covers everyone in the world that I don’t know. Yes, that’s right since everyone I know well will have their own letter, in an effort to cover all my bases I’ve also written one as a catch all for the entire human race.

                That’s not to say that I don’t think there’s value in what follows- quite the opposite.  Though brief, I believe these three points speak volumes.

                But I suppose now that I’ve shared this you can be the judge of what comes next, and this whole crazy endeavor…

A Letter to the World

        For all the people that I haven’t met, which I guess is most of you. I would like to share three things. Yes, I understand that this writing is supposed to epitomize and represent the pinnacle of my time on earth. But I also know that people like simplicity, and in this time of internet memes and 140 character statements, brevity is a prized skill…

        What follows are three tenets that I’d like everyone to remember and carry with them from here on out:

1)      The human race won’t be destroyed by disease or war; we will be content to do ourselves in on convenience and distraction.

2)      Somewhere along the line we’ve confused being tough with not giving a shit.

3)      We shouldn’t get so caught up in how other people live their lives as long as they are A) not hurting anyone else B) they are happy.

       

                You know as well as I do, that I could go on (and on and on) but I think the above is sufficient. It’s here I will the culmination of my worldly wisdom I have on to everyone, and hope that it is at least a starting point for people to build from.

Humbly, I step into the shadow now without complaint.

David