A Simple Truth

A close friend recently said this to me:

 "I've been thinking about my life. It's time. Somehow I've gotten to an unrecognizable place, an unrecognizable reality. It's as if I have been blind for my entire adult life. It's as if I have been on a superhighway to the abyss. How fast it goes by.

Can decades actually pass - many decades - where one part of your brain is screaming silently that something is wrong, and another part of your brain recognizes the pain and decides that buying just the right leather jacket is more important? Apparently so.

So I've been looking at this thing and wondering how I allowed it to happen.

Illusion of immortality. This is how we all get by. If I focused on the fact that I could die at any moment, really focused on it, obsessed about it, than maybe I would have been motivated to make my life better. Maybe.

Instead I just assumed I would get up tomorrow morning. And tomorrow morning turned into 18,000 tomorrow mornings.

Day by day, it does not seem that important. Looking back at 18,000 wasted days reveals it to be a heinous crime against the self. Unforgiveable. The mind can't comprehend.

But the mind can fear. Fear is the end result of decades of regret marinating in its own special sauce.

Peace of mind can only be achieved by recognizing the current moment for what it is. Recognizing it and accepting it, instead of railing against it.

So I have been sitting and thinking about my life. Trying to make sense of what it has become, attempting to sum it all up as simply as I can. And this is what I have come up with.

My life is a joke. It always has been and always will be until the day I die. And it's my fault.

That's it, buddy - my life in a nutshell. I can't fight it anymore, I can't deny it. I cannot delude myself that it's anything but. I can't blame anyone else and I cannot revitalize it. Game over."

With that, he took one last swallow of whiskey, shrugged on his winter coat, and stepped out into the cold.