The older we get, the more we forget, or realize what we never knew to begin with. We pretend to be wise and all-knowing about our lives. Along with the indignities of age comes a certain wisdom, or so it’s said. Yet how much do we recall that really matters? Do we use our brains like a muscle, or is it more like an organ that stimulates our body to perform its daily functions and routines? The receptacle of endless electro static transmissions that enables us to think, say, eat, sleep, fart, and feel our way through the maze of time. To see the day when just thinking the words I’m writing now will be magically transcribed directly to this screen page? Too many questions, the great unknown only knows. The nature of what makes us exist in reality is still up for debate. Even reality has its skeptics.
Some believe god is the culprit, or evolution might explain it away. There are societies and brotherhoods that go on and on about how we got here. Arriving at this moment in the time/space continuum that just disappeared as I wrote this sentence, up to the second you’re reading this now. It’s a tricky situation to be in the moment. It might be better not knowing the answers to the universe. Why question existence when we can’t even remember what we had for breakfast yesterday or how many angels fit on the head of a pin? From the stone age to the space age, everyone has the answers to the problems we face, yet nothing gets done about it, or changes for the better. It’s war all the time. Diseases without cures. Poverty and hunger that reflects hatred and bigotry. With all our powers of science and technology, it’s the same old business as usual. Maybe time stands still or merely the illusion of circular planets in orbit around the sun ever changing night into day, back to night.
Should we be so easy and difficult at the same time? Why do we go around banging and bumping into life like a drunken child? Watching in wide-eyed wonder at the thrill of it all. Gazing up to the stars in awe, or just stupidly staring blindly at the TV as your mind wanders elsewhere. It’s the magnificent mystery that unfolds as these vessels that hold our essence slowly decay and dissipate with the peculiar passage of time. Like a sunrise we are reborn endlessly. Waking in a dream, thinking you’re awake in your sleep. Believing in things that may or may not have happened in real life or in dreams. In real time we may experience the same event with others and still see it differently. Sometimes the eyewitness account of what happens is not what actually occurs.
People come and go, in and out of our lives. Like the tapestry of a patchwork quilt, vignettes of life events and little memories stitched together forming who we represent ourselves to be. Sometimes longtime friends become total strangers. Those you thought you knew turn out to be unknown entities and obstacles that hinder your path in life. While others appear from thin air like tour guides to show the way. Other times it’s like sharing a bathroom in a rooming house of derelicts with questionable hygiene who never leave any toilet paper. I believe what we do comes back to us double, although bad stuff happens to good people and good deeds backfire and blow up in our faces. The greatest experience is when you connect with someone you haven’t seen for years and you pick up where you left off. All the space in between evaporates and time stands still. The passage of time is a long, dark tunnel and you’re a candle slowing burning down and sputtering out. A wisp of smoke curling, rising, and then gone.
How much information is too much? All we need to know is in the instruction manual of a life well-lived. The happiest people are those who dwell in ignorance. Those who overthink, fret, and worry about everything may have a hard time. Making too many plans for a hazy future. It’s possible to thrive in a world without contrivances or handy gadget timesavers that wind up in a drawer, or on the backburner of your mind’s eye. Your basic truth is radically different than mine. What you might believe in is unacceptable to others. Your reality is not mine. I can’t live your life. You can’t dictate mine, yet we’re all in this together. A fine mess of diamonds and dust. A musician once said, “Country music is three chords and the truth.” You can apply that to life. In essence, life could be a simple song that’s happy or sometimes sad. It holds truth in our hearts. Wandering through the caverns of our minds, singing in the shower, laughing at the rain. Storms pass like the hours. Remember to keep smiling, and we’ll never forget to wipe before we flush our troubles away.