Life: A Terminal Condition

Life. It's like a good horror movie: no one gets out alive. It's a miracle that human beings don't just sit in fetal positions, giving up, resolved to the fact that sooner or later, each and every one of us is going to bite the big one. But I guess that's kind of the point. It isn't about how much time we're given but what we do with that time. Sounds like the inside of a Hallmark card. Or a graduation speech.

They say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They say that God only gives you what you can handle. They say a lot of things. I'm convinced that "they" don't really know their ass from their ears. But if what they say is true, then I am Superman. Not in the Jungian sense. No, in the "Last Son of Krypton", "Faster than a Speeding Bullet", invulnerable to everything but Kryptonite, sense.

Thing is, when's it going to stop? I've long since accepted that I'm now getting to the age where the people I've grown up around, the people I've looked up to, are going to die sooner rather than later. Does that make it any easier? Is that realization supposed to calm you when you lie awake at nights, worried that the next one...the next one, will be someone closer?

Or do you just resign yourself to the fact and, as I said above, you make do with the time you have? You know what's extremely apropos this time around?

Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, 

Old age should burn and rage at close of day; 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

Because their words had forked no lightning they 

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It's a dirty world we live in. No one ever said it would be easy. I never expected it to be. I guess I just never expected it to be so rough. Maybe that's the big cosmic joke. You don't get the peace you want until its your time to go. A dirty, dirty world.