A Life Slow Lived
There was something I’ve been looking for over these 29 long years of my life. To travel, explore, see perhaps, blatantly jellied out on the less than whole wheat life of American being you might say.
What I sought in promiscuous friendships or participation in the social clubs of skateboarding, punk rock and my local dive bar, however, and however unfortunately, never gave the permanency that I’d always assumed I’d find some day. Doesn’t every teenager inherently know that for all of their angst and acne, that someday they’ll find both clarity of mind and skin?
But for all of the loving and lost, for all of the late night two-and-a-half packs of Camels, for, and especially, all of the running away from parents, workplaces and responsibilities, it always seemed so apparent that breathlessness was too common, while the end goal never seemed to be in sight (if even in mind).
I’d love to quote some poetry explaining how I’ve finally found meaning ont he road, on this road, but I’ll wager against myself that I won’t, and I certainly haven’t as of yet.
No, it’s not he meaning of life, or even my own life, that I’ve discovered, but the simple truth that perhaps that struggle is a waste. One meant to distract us, or at least myself, from the easier ambition of simply getting away.
From screens. From $87,759 a year. From 10% duties to church and state, as separate as they may claim to be. From, are I say it, obligation.
My loving wife, with all of my numerous 29-year old temper tantrums, my boycotting of every this and that injustice or whim, is not an obligation, she is an end-of-the-tunnel light, always ready to show me that one more chance for horizon.
My son, after a father’s incessant contradictions on whether a boy should ask questions…”don’t ask again” vs. “always ask first,” and his idolation and/or/if adolation of my fatherly heroism, is no more an obligation that a hearty belly laugh is a requirement of a sincerely mind tickling joke.
The only lesson I’ve learned, the key difference to this life when you cast aside the random newness of a varying location, is — and as eloquently simple as I can put it — less TV and more campfire.
God bless a good imagination.