Static on the wires

When life gives you lemons, grind them the fuck up add some sugar and voila all is good. Well what if you are on a desert island with one lemon tree and you're thirsty as hell?

During  my short span of life on this spinning blue dot I have come to learn a thing or two." I didn't just fall off the turnip truck", does this mean I did at one time? When I fell, did I look for someone to help me back on it? We reach out for that helping hand, a little help from our friends.  If we are lucky and blessed we find that and we learn to stay on board, even through the bumpy ride in the back 40 as we plow ahead to get the harvest in. I got to thinking what if nobody saw you fall off the truck and the harvest continued? That is a long walk back to the farmhouse. Maybe it's hot out and you get sun burnt, as you walk you rage about how the fuck?  When you get home you ask why didn't you notice me, how could you have not seen me? This begs the question what lesson did you learn?

"Like a baby stillborn........ who has tried in his way to be free"......is he?   Like the abused child who doesn't have that one good influence to plant the seed of resilience, who then brings to his or her world hate and more abuse, are they to blame? "When I knew better, I did better" can one die before they know? Can one never learn when they are alive? What about the person who never sees the stars or the milky way because they pass out drunk before it gets dark; those who never caught that sunrise or sunset because they had to work in a factory 14 hours a day. The eleven year old prostitute who doesn't get to go for forest walks or hug a tree and feel the life force rejuvenate their sorry soul. The three year old boy of drug addicted parents doesn't get fed or changed when he needs to. The loved child with terminal cancer. The child molester who lives until he is 95. The political prisoner who gets stoned or hanged before they can tell their side of the story. The grandmother who raised her child right, waiting her whole life to pour her love out to her grand babies, and her children must move far away for work.

Is life meaningless? Because it is not for others, does that make it untrue?  Because it is for many does that make it true? These are heady questions, ones that make people very uncomfortable. Viktor Frankl found meaning in the concentration camp with murder all around him. Do you know a Viktor? Did they mentor you? Or did you lose your faith?

After Joan Gideon suddenly lost her husband she wrote about her experience in her book, The year of magical thinking. This talented writer said:
"When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

Although I could never express it so eloquently and correctly, I too have come to know this in my journey. I get stuck in the meaninglessness of life, this void that is all encompassing, so scary and consuming that I will do anything to get out from it. That I will sacrifice all I love and care about and know is right to not feel it. I will search for the meaning in all the wrong ways...all the possible hurtful and damaging ways in order to just not feel it. I wonder now at the stupidity and purposelessness of this useless quest. Is this too meaningless?  Does this and all it has encompassed this last 1000 plus days have meaning? Is it just a space and time on this spinning blue dot where I am off the turnip truck and can't find my way back home? Will I tell my grand babies the lessons I learned from it or will I just get run over by the truck before I learn them? Is it all just static on the wires and I can't hear the message yet?