We’re always looking for answers, trying to deconstruct and then re-thread the meaning of it all. Why are we here and for how long, who deserves to stay and who goes, what does it all add up to in the end, if it anything at all, what really counts and what doesn’t even make the mark, why are things just so and not any other way… But there is no foolproof manual or road map to living. Anything and everything could turn out to be the exact opposite of what you expect, people will let you down, you will let people down, and most importantly, you will let yourself down several times over.

You will fall when you least expect it and no matter how times you pick yourself up, you will continue to fall. Even when you think you’re on the upswing, you’re really just falling backwards. It takes a lifetime to realize that it’s all about what happens between the fall and the rise back up. THAT is what counts, matters, filters through the years, remains, gets taken, left behind, remembered… That’s the thing about life and living, you have to live it forward but you can only understand it backwards. Things make sense only after they happen to you, after you’ve taken a huge bite, chewed, swallowed, and digested it all. Only then can you figure out why things work a certain way or not, and what does that mean anyway? That you can use that experience and knowledge to tackle similar or even other situations that may come your way? No, it means nothing.

It just means you lived one day, 24 hours, 1440 minutes x 60 seconds, and made it through the other side to face another day. Nothing will ever be the same. Even if you have the same experiences, you will react differently because you’re audacious enough to think you’re different now and you can try a new approach. Besides, the same approach wouldn’t work either even if you had to try it. Things have a life of their own anyway, so what turned blue yesterday will now turn red instead. The litmus test is being able to float above it all – the conditioned reflexes to the shit hitting the fan, the shock and disappointment when things don’t stay the same or the disbelief at things not changing either, the expectation that the wound will heal and stop hurting, the temptation to configure things a certain way – all the mindless bovine moves of the herd.

There are no shock absorbers here, life hits you and hits you hard, you bang your head against the walls and bang it hard, people watch you with their backs against the walls and you do the same when it’s their turn to be spun around. Nothing works except squinting at the sun with a blank page every morning and shredding it to pieces when dusk starts creeping towards dawn each night. That’s the only thing that has ever worked. You forget about what you touched and tasted yesterday because there is no space for leftovers tomorrow. 

You begin again, clothed in just the cloak of awareness that this may or may not work. You may or not succeed but there are no guarantees that you will fail either. Time is just something that carries you from one moment, one experience, one soon-to-become memory to the next. There is no point trying to replicate the moments just as there is no sense in looking for the same feelings in the same old places.

Feelings grow beneath the surface and move faster than you can figure them out. Trying to outsmart them doesn’t work either. The best that you can do is grab them in your fists like a slithering snake trying to sneak past you. They will form a tight coil around your wrists and pierce you with their venom but at least for that one brief moment you will be victorious – the conqueror, the vanquisher, the slayer of your fears. After all, every single day is just another shot at trying to get it right...