sprouting a thought...

The answers are never as simple as we hope they’ll be nor as complex as we expect them to be. Most importantly we already know the answers; we just seem to forget, a lot. This is not a self help book, unless you want it to be, this is a story, a journey, an attempt by one woman to understand why she is here and why her existence is significant.

We over think everything. Of course, life is not a straight and narrow path. Often times you make pit stops, take an exit you think is promising or just plain pull over and take a nap, take a drink, get out and scream at the top of your lungs that you’re just not getting it. At some point we’ve all felt like we’re just spinning our wheels, moving but not really getting anywhere. And so we give up. Gas is too expensive. The road’s going to end at some point and probably anti-climatically. Everyone surrenders their waking life, you have to. We all need a rest. This manifests itself as the point you reach in your day or in your week or in your life when simply detaching from the world seems like the most comfortable and painless option. It’s the zombie-like feeling you get when commuting back from a long day at work. You’ve got that million mile stare, eyes agape, gulping down sensory information without cognitively chewing, ingesting images because part of you has punched the time clock on reality and all you can hope for is that your body will manage on its own. You need a break. You’ve disappeared then. These little, or in some cases, large chasms between reality and dreaming or the subconscious and conscious or between waking and sleeping, can sometimes feel like a death from the present. What you are left with is a floating feeling; you are a balloon that has lost its string and is making a rapid run for the Pacific and when it finally touches down and plants itself on the surface of that great water, you can’t remember how you got there or why. There is some sort of block, there is something that must be confronted but perhaps it’s easier to lay face down in the water and slowly embrace the moment of sinking. And this is all fine for a day or a week or maybe a month, but what happens when you’ve been hiding for a year, or two or ten or a lifetime? At some point, in fact, at many points, you are given a choice: remain eyes closed, floating on a vast and frigid ocean or release, wake, gasping and struggling for new air.

You see, I’m just like you, only my departure from life lasted for fifty years. I had somehow entered a strange no-where place, neither in the clouds nor on the ground, just a sort of uncontrollable floating. It was as if my body had been parsed into sand and the crashing waves of the world and of my own psyche kept me forever suspended, not quite here, not quite there. I spent more than half of my life in between sleeping and waking because I was afraid of what lurked at either end.

We are all looking for an explanation, a reason, a purpose. How is that we came to be? The How is greatly debated: a seven day odyssey or a big bang. Perhaps an egg cracked open somewhere or someone hit this earth in the right-side back pocket of the universe and we collected in the deep, infinite darkness of some seedy bar in Nebulous 5. I’m not so much concerned with the How, I’m stuck on the Why. Why are we here? And when I cannot answer for the entire human race, I bare my teeth and look hard into the creases in my forehead, I spoon out the blackness from my pupils and spread out my iris. This body must have come with an instruction manual, and somewhere in the beginning there must be an explanation for my existence. I feel that life is one of those things that you slowly uncover and then, if you’re lucky, you die at the ripe old age of almost getting it. The alternative is to answer Rod Stewart’s wish, that is, being able to know what we know now, when we were younger. However, if you knew everything by the time you were twelve there wouldn’t be much point because you wouldn’t believe yourself, you’d keep searching anyway. Perhaps that’s the purpose, to search for a purpose. Who knows? Yet, we are all on a quest to find the answer, to uncover the truth as to our existence. Why? What difference do I make?

There comes a time when you must decide whether or not you want to continue to be a part of the world or to leave. This is the story of my waking. It hasn’t been an easy or comfortable journey but it is meaningful and when you’re at the end of your days, what more can you really hope for? You just want to make a little sense of this life and hope that your being here not only meant something to you, but meant something to others. And perhaps, most importantly that when you depart, you will be missed. Maybe that is the purpose in and of itself. To connect to others, to build relationships, to be.