Easy comes, easy goes... did it really happen?

1998

And just like that, I learned to let go. I say it this way so that it feels like I had a say in the decision.

There are three truths: what I saw, what she saw, and what happened. The last one is the least important. In the end, I insisted on ignoring the facts. Reality is stubborn; it has teeth.

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Life was good at first. I felt Gherig-ish, like I was the luckiest man on earth.  When you tend to a garden, perfect great happy moments can be experienced but not owned. You may choose to never stop and smell the roses and you will still die, unceremoniously. The risk is - as Hare Krishnas love to tell you while asking you for money - getting too attached to the garden. 

You already learned all this, so you interrupt your journey now and then to contemplate these moments, or to attempt to keep them with you. It is all futile. It does not matter how much you water the flowers, nor the quality of the soil they grew in. They will still die in your hands, if you are lucky. Most likely they'll perish when you turn your back at them. Turns out, it is not the rose's thorn that hurts you. It's its ephemerality that pierces deep into the soul and deflates us all of what sometimes makes us mildly happy. Grief robs us of our humanity while drowning us head-on in it.

How Life Looks Like From Where I Sit

A story was meant to follow this Friday-into-Saturday introspection. It was a story of love, lust, confidence, strength, mistrust, betrayal, disappointment, moroseness, a shred of acceptance with a twist and some resemblance of closing for those involved. It was meant to present us with a slice of human experience that would have felt harrowingly familiar to some. But it is also testament of how easy we have it these days. Rather than worrying about war, famine, or disease... we worry about our feelings. We lost perspective and got the priorities wrong. We are unhappy with what we have, an unequivocal sign that we will remain unhappy whether or not we get what we feel we lack, be it material or otherwise.

Rare instances of mental clarity are to be treasured, and then immediately obliterated by way of your narcotic of choice. Do you favor numbing yourself with alcohol, diazepam, film, social media, streaming, or some misplaced idea of meaning? If your existence derives its value from someone whose existence is worthless, does it carry part of this value forward anyway, and in any way? How far and for how long does the chain of value stretch before it hits the wall of meaninglessness?

How It Looks Like Where I Sit

Perhaps there is some purpose to the existence of some of us. But even if we accept that those instances may occur, we must admit that whatever that purpose is, it will only last an instant in the relentless passing of time and the constant expansion of the universe of the tangible. Very soon, whatever meaning our life had for a split moment will disintegrate like a rose under the fiery sun of the Texan summer.