Real Things
I don’t want to live a life where I’m already tired at the age of 19. Sometimes I study for the love of knowledge, and when those times do come around, a college education seems like a blessing. It’s so expensive, learning. And yet I wonder if this learning is what is practical and real. Am I going to get a job because I have learned about such and such? It’s all just information. How does that make me better? How am I more capable? How can I contribute to society because I know something someone told me (because that is all education is, passing on information)?
I said I’m tired. I’m also physically tired. I’m not getting the sleep I need, and I’m constantly racking my brains out to try and figure out what’s going on all the time. I hate being stupid, so I try my hardest not to be. That tires me out mentally as well. And how does anyone rid themselves of stupidity anyway, it’s an inherent factor that makes a human, well, human.
I’m tired because I’m taught to chase after secular things. Get an education, become smarter, become successful, earn money to live well, earn enough money so your kids can live well and you can look after your parents. With all respect, I wish I could be successful just so I can provide for my parents in the future. But I’m tired of thinking about life in this way.
Just give me a week where I did not have to live the way the world expects, give me a week to escape. Fill me with wisdom on the ways of things that are larger than something as limited as life.
Life is just a couple of paper thin years. Written on them are accomplishments, mistakes, experiences, real things for now… but then the story is over and if it’s a good one it will be read and if not forgotten. Can you tell me the story of that person who died in that year because of that incident? Already it depends so much on whether that person is of any significance historically, and why are they so different from the millions of other lives that existed, or are existing? Is some important dead guy more important than some not so important living guy? Why do people not know about the one who is alive?
What separates the dead from the living is such a frightening, amazing thing. I am breathing, yet the dead man is not. I am currently the owner of thoughts, emotions, and identity, and yet these are not just like breathing, these are precious elements that belong differently to everyone. So what of the dead man? Has he ceased to own these things? Do they exist only in the past? If you view these things like art, they were once individual and unique, which makes them so much more valuable - do these treasures vanish second by second while lives terminate? I am not satisfied with something so devastating. It doesn’t make sense to me, how I can be, how I am, and then after this measurement of dimension we call time, I am not. At least not in this sense of living.
God, why is this such an enigma? I want to understand why I am here and what I am supposed to be doing for the years in which I live on this earth. And death does scare me, just the fact that I may not be myself, and my loved ones not themselves either - will I be able to recognize them? Will I be able to feel something so deep and genuine for them then as I do now? Will things so beautiful and delicate as these disappear? I think I value this too much for it to be altered in any way. I think I am made to love for a reason, and now that I’ve learned how, to take it away is too bitter, for God, for good reason, for chance and mystery.
So as I was saying, I’m tired. Good night.
