At Least They're Committed

Getting up, plopping down in my home office, working, exercising, feeding the chickens, cleaning, showering, dealing with everyone’s personal shit, making dinner, watching a movie because there’s nothing else to do during this godforsaken winter. . . . Is it time for bed yet?

Thus is my life. Since we’ve stopped drinking alcohol during the week, it has become painfully apparent that full-bore reality is grossly dull.

What do people look forward to? Eating? Sex? Traveling? Culture? Aha! I am getting to attend more cultural events — thus I can say afterward that I’ve been to a cultural event. Well, golly, that’s four hours four times a year! Do I enjoy it? Of course. But afterward, it doesn’t really change things, does it?

I desperately need to find something that validates my existence: A task, a mission. Yes, I am completely and unequivocally dedicated to my children and grandchildren, but that’s not really about me, is it? It’s about them and how much I absolutely, positively adore them . . .

. . . and worry about them. Yup. The more we have in our lives, the more we have to lose. There was a M.A.S.H. episode on that once. This is why I’m “not scared of dying and I don’t really care” because “if it’s peace you find in dying, well then, let the time be near.” (Blood, Sweat and Tears, circa 1970) MUCH better me than them!

Evidently there’s more to my mission in life, maybe I’m not ever meant to know what it is. Maybe it’s to be in the right place at the right time to help someone whose life will have a great, highly positive impact. Yeah, I’ll stay as long as I’m supposed to.

Getting up, plopping down, working, exercising, feeding the chickens, cleaning, showering, dealing with everyone’s personal shit, making dinner, watching a movie because there’s nothing else to do during this godforsaken winter. . . . Is it time for bed yet?

At what point are we no longer contributing anything meaningful to this world? Why are people so excited to be living to be 80? 90? Older? Is that crippled old woman in the wheelchair with the tubes in her nose and stomach having fun? What about the old dude who bellows at his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren about what ungrateful bastards they are? Miserable. So, why?

God’s plan, not ours. I get it. Maybe they’re our punishment. Or maybe it’s their punishment and we just have to endure it. Maybe it’s nobody’s punishment and it just ‘is.’

A lot of youngish people have died recently and when we hear about it, we gasp and say, “Oh, no! What happened?” But a little part of me is, like, “I hope they rest in peace. I know I sure would like to.”

Does this sound as if I’m depressed? I’m not. I am really quite content with where I’m at in my life. I’m eternally grateful for my family, my career, my friends and my home. I guess I’m restless and I just feel like I should be either doing a greater good or be done by now.

Getting up, plopping down, working, exercising, feeding the chickens, cleaning, showering, dealing with everyone’s personal shit, making dinner, watching a movie because there’s nothing else to do during this godforsaken winter. . . . Is it time for bed yet?

Nothing ever changes! And we’re all afraid, right? We’re in a moonless night walking barefoot on a precariously thin patch of ice over the deepest center of the ocean. Our feet are burning from the frost and we’d like to take a chance and jump, hopefully, onto something unseen nearby that is bright and warm and exhilarating. But we know full well that should it not be there — or should we miss — as we come back down, the ice will break under our weight and we’ll fall forever into the freezing, endless abyss.

Yes, I’m happy. I’m just looking for what needs to come next. Part of me is afraid of falling into that abyss. I mean, as of right now, my name will never be in any textbooks or dictionaries; nobody cries themselves to sleep at night because of anything I’ve done. To put it plainly, while I have fucked up a LOT, I haven’t done anything unfathomably horrible, and nothing truly horrible has happened to me or, most importantly, anyone I love. The more time I’m here, however . . . you get the picture.

So, Gabriel, I’m here and I’m listening. Do you know of what I should be doing? (Fingers strumming, looking pensively out the window at the leafless branches.) Everything I’ve initiated has been shot down and I feel worthless and weak. Maybe you can show me in a dream tonight? Or a song on the radio?

I’ll wait. No hurry at all. I’ll just be here getting up, plopping down, working, exercising, feeding the chickens, cleaning, showering, dealing with everyone’s personal shit, making dinner, watching a movie because there’s nothing else to do during this godforsaken winter, going to bed . . . and praying for a meaning to my existence.