So here in my neck of the woods, its a beautiful Sunday morning. I’m sitting on my deck watching the remaining nub of the Black and Mild I have almost finished smoking smoulder into less than nothing. There are still a few more puffs to be had there, but in relatively short order our brief affair will end when this little baby cigar ends up being snuffed out of existence.
Of course I wouldn’t legitimately be able to think of myself as damaged if I only indulged a single intoxicant at once. With that in mind it shouldn’t come as any great shock that I’m also waiting for a Delta-9 edible that is far above my pay grade (25mg versus 5mg to 15mg normally) to kick in. In addition while my morning coffee has worn off, I am content when I remember that my stock of alcohol is more than enough to carry me through.
I’m also watching a soccer game I don’t really care about on the TV I dragged out here. To be fair, the people at the game seem to really care whether or not Manchester United or Liverpool prevails. While I hope they all find whatever it is they are looking for, I doubt it will end that way. But hey, their enthusiasm is contagious and I like that. It makes me feel better. Even as an uninterested spectator, I still feel like I’m part of something when I watch an event like this. It’s the same way I will also feel later today when I tune into the NCAA Women’s Championship Basketball game between South Carolina and Iowa.
On top of all that, I decided to write this particular blog post. I’m between jobs now. My old job ended recently and my new job won’t start for a bit. So in a rare circumstance over the course of my life, I don’t have anybody else’s tech shit to worry about. My brain doesn’t have to and thus isn’t (maybe not as damaged as I led you all to believe eh) running background threads grinding away on their bits of self-induced pain.
I said all that to say that clearly this means I have something to say. I do, but it’s not really about tech. It’s about people. We are all damaged and broken, even those of us who don’t think we are. Our lack of self-awareness can’t change the fact that an accumulation of a lifetime of tragedies is what makes a human being a human being.
“The Human Condition” isn’t a statement of fact so much as it is the name of a debilitating condition that somehow manages to produce beauty the likes of which I still cannot fully appreciate in the midst of middle age. Part of me intrinsically believes that the moment in which I self-actualize and can actually appreciate that beauty has to be the same moment that I will die. Not because God wills it but because in the only sense of purpose that matters, my life will no longer have any purpose at that point.
That’s because life is a journey, not a destination. Self actualization is the dream that we can never reach because doing so renders the exercise meaningless.
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
-Robert Browning
That sums it up. But that having been said, people gotta be people. We can’t always be creating beauty, striving to take our art to the next level or figuring out how to self-actualize; sometimes we gotta chill the fuck out. We have to kick back and relax. We have to actually enjoy life. If we don’t do this we are going to be miserable regardless of how successful we are. Others around us will also be more miserable for it.
I used to think I knew how to have fun. But my fun was really just another system of self-actualization tightly governed by a set of rules. For me this system mostly involved movies, video games, books and various tenets around how one should engage in these activities. Somewhere along the way I realized this was dumb. For example when I started a video game, I would work very very hard to complete it. They became almost like a job. Even if I didn’t like playing the game, if it was a game that I was supposed to play and beat (due other rules around genre preferences), then I would force myself to complete it anyway.
This was not fun. It was just another way for me to drive myself to keep up with some invisible yet overbearing Metronome that beat in synchronicity in an effort to rule my life. For years it was successful at baiting me. Not so much anymore. If I start a book and don’t love it, I stop reading. If I start a video game and don’t love it, I stop playing. If I start a video game with a long complicated story, I don’t sweat it when I haven’t played it for awhile. If I need to start over, I will. If I need to reduce the difficultly, I will.
At some level I guess finally learned how to have fun. For me fun is actually about freedom and being able to just do what I want without being burdened by all the bullshit. I guess that’s why I’m sitting here on my back porch wading my way into another day of inebriation while on “holiday”. I don’t have a plan, I just have some vague notions bouncing around in my head for what kind of shenanigans I’ll get into while chilling out for the next few weeks.
Which is fucking great. That’s how it oughta be for at least some of the time. It took me entirely too long to figure this out. I think on some level that’s what all fishermen intrinsically know. Maintain some vague notion of what you want to accomplish and go about it in some semi-recreational fashion while having enough patience to be able to chill out for a few hours and let fate play its part.
For me that time has come and I love it. I think if possible, that’s the kind of person I should strive to be all of the time during any of my pursuits. But course if I ever get there, that would likely represent my moment of self-actualization and that of course means, according to my internal mental rules, that I would die in that moment because that would rob my life of purpose.
Without purpose there would be no life. But life can exist without purpose. On the surface that makes no sense but if you take the time to ruminate on it you’ll realize that since life is basically the search for purpose, that life always exists without purpose but the existence of purpose is what makes life worth living.
Because that is what we are all searching for. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping the ghost of Jerry Garcia is going to show up and reveal to me. Join me next week and find out whether or not it worked out for me… cause that edible just kicked in and it’s one hell of a bucking bronco ;)