“The mind is beautiful because of the paradox. It uses itself to understand itself." -Adam Elenbass
I've been speaking to multiple people (almost
everyone I know, actually) about the idea of figuring it out and how we're
pressured to know what's going on in different, "important" aspects
of our lives, and we're supposed to know these answers by a certain age.
But as days keep passing and years keep strolling, it is clear that no one has
figured it out. By the time Barrett is old enough to understand what I've been
writing and is old enough to question these things within his own life, it will
still be clear that I haven't figured it out. And I am beginning to feel okay
about that, and also beginning to feel okay with the fact that I kind of like
knowing that I will never know what I will be doing when I am 40 until I am 40,
and I will never know what will happen at the end until it's the end. We don’t even
know what’s going to be happening next week. It's funny that this all seems
like common sense, and yeah, everyone does (or should) question life at
moments, especially the not so good moments, and we're left wondering what else
is out there, even when what's right here is just enough.
The five of us are flying through the mundane
webs of this one life, and they say life is short, but it's only short when
you're stuck in the shit of the now. We need to realize that life is actually
insanely long when we think about how much we have left. Of course, there are
those statistics that tell us that one of us might die in the next twenty minutes
in some freak accident, but those are just numbers. And ones I just made up for
matters of perspective. In reality, we're just average twenty-somethings that
will most likely live for the next sixty years. Sixty. Years. And our
parents will most likely live for the next thirty years. And Barrett, he's got
triple that. We tell little ones, "you've got your whole life ahead of
you," and I believe that. But after a certain age, we begin to tell ourselves
that, and I call bullshit on that phrase after the age of 18. Or maybe 22, when
life actually starts to feel like life. That phrase becomes an excuse, and a
terrible one. We get caught up in telling ourselves that and we push the dreams
to the side, even it's just a dream about moving, traveling, etc. And I know I
just said that life is long, but it's not long enough to simply sit down and
reflect on what happened, think about trying to be in the present, and keep
telling ourselves that there is always tomorrow. There is tomorrow, but
tomorrow is just going to be another today. And if we spend our time thinking
about dreaming but not acting, then we're just defined by the nine-to-fives,
the social security numbers, and the facades of our Instagram feeds.
Sorry for the absence (Brit, I'm talking to you) and sorry for the long rant.
Got some catching up to do on the documentation front.
Halloween! Barrett went as baby Frankenstein and got a handful of chocolate and a face full of blue artificial coloring. He had fun and checked trick or treating off his list of things to learn.
Here are a few more life moments:
I spoke to Daniel on the phone the other night for over an hour, speaking of topics similar to the ones above. At the end of it all, I ended up at this video, which kind of gives a beautiful face to the concepts I've been teasing out. You can measure your life out in jelly beans, coffee spoons, or not at all, but whatever you do, don't forget to remember that it's all going to keep moving no matter what, so we've got to do the same. And Julian will always be there with its sunshine-y fields, apple cider & pie, and a house of books to remind us that that is really all that matters in this life.
