Your life is a ticking time bomb. It is
only a matter of time before something will go terribly horribly,
wrong. It'll happen more than once in your life, and it'll get
progressively more severe the older you get. Your beloved pet could
die. You could get a horrible disease, be arrested, justly or
unjustly, lose all your money, have your spouse leave you suddenly,
or die, you could lose your job, or your house could be foreclosed
on. When faced with these intractable problems, the only thing you
can do is deal with it. That's it. Live with the pain. You can want
to “give up” but really, that option doesn't exist. Think about
what happens when you lose your car keys. You have to tear through
the house looking for them. You throw your hands up in the air and
say “where are they?” You just say, “I give up.” But...can
you really? Your keys are still lost, you can't just appeal to a
higher authority or wish them into your hands. You gotta rethink the
problem, look somewhere you haven't looked, or double check somewhere
you have, and sooner or later you'll find them. Or what? You'll break
down in heap and cry? Slit your wrists? Transform into a butterfly
and fly away? Go into your time machine?
So let's get back to our problem. Our
problem is called life, and the strange thing about it is, it can
always be worse. And the less you have, the more grateful you are to
have it. Everything you have is something you can lose. Can anyone
realistically prepare themselves to lose everything they love in
life? Of course not. But you have to realize that everything outside
your own mind and your own body is an accessory. Not just material
possessions, but girlfriends, wives, your job, you can lose it all.
But it's all secondary to your mental health and well-being. Even
more so than your physical well being. For example, while it's not a
life I'm jealous of, Steven Hawking has one of the greatest
scientific minds on the planet earth, caged in a body that can barely
move more than his eyeballs.
The only thing that cannot be taken
away from you, at least not with without some major trauma, is your
sense of self, your abilities, your memories, your aspirations. No
matter how low I feel, I can always look up to the sky and see the
moon. Unless I go to jail, no one can take that away from me. I've
got ten fingers and ten toes. I bet you do too. I can sell my guitar,
but no one can take away my love for music, and my skills at playing
(even if they do get a little rusty without practice.)
Everyone loves a story of redemption.
How many actors or musicians have had their careers blow up in a
fiery ball of doom, but came back a decade or so later? How many
times has Donald Trump gone bankrupt? (I think it's four. Does he
have some kind of deal that whenever he gets out of bankruptcy he
also gets a new wife?) Whatever happens, you have to be strong,
because you don't have a choice. That doesn't mean you can't have
help. It doesn't mean you can't seek out ways to deal with the
problem, be they psychiatric help, a night on the town to take your
mind off your problems for a while, maybe if you want to meet someone
and the bar isn't your thing, there's always online dating; there's
always the library. Just know when you're crossing the line between
“retail therapy” and “hoarding,” between “having a bad day”
and “being a dick to everyone.” Know your limits, but also know
that you will be pushed beyond them whether you're ready for them or
not. Know that limits you accept are a figment of your imagination,
And if you push hard enough, for long enough, anything is possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment