I’ve been living in Naples, Italy for nearly two years. I didn’t learn the language. Instead, I learned how to play the guitar and mandolin, and dressed up in a cookie monster costume in Rome, giving hugs to hundreds of people. The Sign I held while in the costume read “One world, One Life, Make it count.” When I first moved off base I would ride my bicycle back and forth between the hotel I was staying at and work. At the time it was efficient and kept me in decent shape. I moved into my apartment a few months later and while it was about the same distance, there were a few factors that made me give up the bike and take to walking. First of all, Naples traffic is ridiculous and after getting hit by cars and thrown off one too many times, I decided it wasn’t fun anymore. During those collisions, I was lucky to land more or less on my backpack so as not to injure myself too badly. Personal safety aside, I discovered something I felt was pretty important during my walk to and from work. I discovered that this walk was the only time I had that I really detach from what was going on in life and do the old introspection routine. Despite the trashy town crumbling around me, when I walk that route, the whole world falls away and allows me to singularly focus on serious topics I actually give a damn about. It inspired what I’m about to write.
When I was a kid, I was a loser. So far, as I’ve bulldozed into adulthood, I have had this idea that I could save the world and be a tangible, intimate, force for good. I wanted to succeed where I felt religion has failed. Religion hasn’t failed at everything. It provides a positive culture suitable to help communities thrive and it provides that motivation for the positivity that is needed in people to help each other along their roads to happiness, but not much else. The intimacy of religion is really the intimacy of it’s followers. I know that people can do good all by themselves, without needing ulterior motivation, supernatural or otherwise, and I think that while it doesn’t necessarily speak against the character of someone who is religious, it speaks more for the character of the non-religious when they do.
I believed that I could succeed in the entire world where ideas that have evolved and been built up over thousands of years have not. Recently I realized that it is not possible. Some of you might think it is common sense, that we are mere mortals and that very few make it to celebrity status and even they succeed only in being worshiped. We all wake up on one side of the bed, or the other. We all have to take care of our bodies or else we’ll crumble, ashes to ashes, sooner than later. We all do the things we do in pursuit of happiness. We all die. It seems I was born with a thick head.
We fight each other over our opinions of the truth as if truth is something magical and attainable only by not connecting the dots. Truth doesn’t care if you kill yourself for it and anything suggesting there is something more important that life is not worth wasting breath on. As a teenager I started questioning my own beliefs. I noticed that people who question their beliefs tend to not look too far from their comfort zone. They’ll question themselves but hope like hell they’re right because if they aren’t, that usually means that neither were their parents or all the people they respect and admire. I was already uncomfortable. I was weird. Internally I had the pain and confusion of a thousand frustrated gorillas who had just been scalped, shaved, and starved for three weeks. I imagine scalping hurts, starving isn’t healthy and no one has ever seen a shaved gorilla and lived to tell about it. I was lost and all the things that usually help people get their bearings just bought me more time.
I am a sinusoidal wave. Sometimes I have the energy of a koala bear on crack and the confidence of Harrison Ford. Other times I feel like sometime during the night I died and my body didn’t get the memo in the morning. Sometimes I can party for two weeks straight, but that’s my limit. I can’t have too much fun or I run the risk of getting too serious. It’s not a question of deserving having a good time or not. I’m scared to death of wasting my life in pleasure when there are less fortunate people born into the mud pits of oppression. On the other hand, If I’m too serious for too long, I become isolated in a tower of my own design. As I live and breathe, I desperately create and modify my understanding of what it means to be human and truly alive so that perhaps at the end of the day I’ll be satisfied with myself.
I’ve accepted I am a mere mortal. It’s about time, right? I can’t save the world. We must all do for ourselves and each other. My arms can only hold so many. I can make my life the catalyst for only so many, and when I am out of sight, I am out of mind. Space creates the distance and time does all the rest. I have finally decided the point for my life, and I’m hoping it’s more realistic than previously. I pray these goals sufficient; that despite the most generous triumphs or even the most embarrassing blunders I will commit in my life, whatever my position on philosophic, religious, or political ideas, etc. happen to be at any given moment, wherever I happen to be, whether I settle down in one town someday or not, I will love those dear to me with all that I am and hands won’t ignore the universe that exists beyond my immediate world, so long as the neurons in my brain still retain their spark. This is my point. This is my road to happiness.
Leave a Comment
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
