Still feeling the accelerated temperature from all these smoldering yesterdays, I look forward to see what is to come. Either the brightness is blinding in its ever presence, or the void has consumed all the visible spectrum so even the next step remains a mystery. But be it vast illumination or total darkness, it is still one foot, then another, and so on. Staggering or sprinting, set forth towards another day, as this one fades with each moment to becoming nothing more than memory.

As had happened to all the rest. As is tomorrow’s fate, no matter what dread or anticipation awaits.

I’m shot. You too? Happens a lot these days, feels like. Get on with it though, right? Shall we?

Suppose we look at the state of things, whatever in the fresh hell that means. All technocratic doom makers and ill-informed soothsayers. All the hopeless benevolent types and malicious and malevolent success stories. Sensations fading in impact and gratification fleeting faster than the mind can even acquire in the first. Overstimulated in negativities and underwhelmed in the authentic actualities of this existence. Pursuits, pervasive and ultimately pointless while stagnations surround and drowns out any ambition deserving of light.

Or, so it so often seems. Perhaps not quite to the extreme as perceived, but eventually even incorrect perceptions become reality when reinforced enough. Need not be quite real to be believed, yet the grim stature of this era on the third rock from the sun isn’t a total fabrication. I, for one, am not of the belief this is all some simulation, no matter how much of this is constructed in appearance by the minds of its billions of witnesses.

But for better or for the benefit of horrors, this world is ours. Barely crawled from our primitive roots, we as a species hold the potential for both seemingly endless exploration and total destruction. The latter, we have been reminded these last few years, is but a few decisions away. Thankfully, all of our world leaders are well adjusted, humble and considerate folks.

Get it? It’s a joke. Because I said something that isn’t true, so that makes it funny. It’s always funnier when you explain it. I can do it again, if you’d like.

But anti-humor aside, it seems a hard enough idea to grasp at times that we are all part of something that will someday be regarded as history. If we manage to keep it together long enough for there to be literate and able minded descendants scattered through the next few decades, centuries, etc. It is not, nor has it ever been, something that is truly certain. Keep that in the back of your mind, would you?

Yet, finding faith in our fellow humans is of the utmost importance, perhaps now more than ever. While at the same time, that seems to be becoming more and more impossible with each step forward in time. Trust is low, and not always undeserving. There is a certain amount of fallacy that all of this is built on, even in times that were more stable than now. And while the argument for benevolent untruths is not invalid, it will certainly not guide us any further down the path towards a better future. That road less travelled. It seems to be, at least to the guy writing now, that the other road is the one we are aiming at. To dissolve our faith in each other, in our communities and societies large and small, is a notion that seems to be growing. And it is not all that accidental, with some arguing that every little bit of it is calculated and intended. And while some of it certainly is, I do think plenty of it has to do with the finite perspective associated with our limited timeline of life, while still being born into a world that has varied histories, culturally, ethnically, politically, and so on, all that move in a seemingly slower pace that the human lifespan can easily digest.

And on top of that, we are not that far, in terms of evolution, from ancestors that lived in a world where kill or be killed reigned as a prime motivator for all internal energy being spent. And we are still genetically identical to worlds seeming so ancient, where masses of human violence coalesced on the regular, to bring about the demise of opposing warrior classes until a victor became mortally assured. From there, the way was made easy to do with what they want with the more vulnerable classes of the loser’s society. Rarely, if ever, were kind and caring things being conducted in such moments.

And while so many of us, including myself at times of resurgent ignorance, think ourselves beyond such means- it only takes a bit of attention to realize that is so very far from true. See: the area east of the Carpathian Mountains, or the Levant, or several other areas on this still tremendously exposed and vulnerable space rock, hurtling through the cosmos at ludicrous speed.

I suppose the truth is that none of us are innocent after a certain point. But that does not make us all monsters, even if there are plenty enough among us.

Seems like at this point in this specific brand of tirade that an answer might be presented. Don’t hold your breath.

I talk of trust, but there are those that I know I will never be able to trust, be it in my small and personal universe, or this species at large. And if there is any ability for truth left within me, I would have to admit that there are those that most certainly feel that way about your humble narrator, as hard as that might be for you to believe, dear reader. Not armies of folks, but even if a singular person of magnitude can no longer have faith in your good will, that is plenty devastating on its own. And much of that mistrust is earned, inward and outward. And while the optimist aspects of my mind attempt to believe in reconciliations, the cynical side insists on knowing better. And while not entirely undefeated, the cynic is far from a losing record.

Besides, it might just be that all this grandiose thinking serves nothing aside from the distraction from personal dissatisfaction regarding the outcomes of my own existence. If fact, at moments, maybe even this one, it most certainly is.

My waking dreams in some form of tatters, or at least in violent redesign, while the nocturnal type will regularly poke and prod at the insecurities, over sensationalize fears or play with ideas infectious and unrequited. Dreams are like that, though. So apparent, even the things you attempt to hide, from even your own self.

Perhaps it is that I fear my own heart and mind more than anything else. Might explain the varied efforts over certain ages to dull or numb either or both of them. Though there have always been moments, here and there, where I fed the unrelenting fires of both. This current position in time is not exactly one of those, though.

Yet, in an adult life so atypical as mine seems, it so often appears to be inseparably isolating. Is this all a call to some otherwise uniqueness, or is that all confined to the singular reality inside my skull? My own reflection staring back as though some stranger on a television screen? Perhaps that is a statement making my aging mind so apparent. Should I embrace such destitution, or fight it, with willfully blind futility? And in order to not think of what I shouldn’t, I think of the world and how to save her as she seems to crumble away.

Deflective narcissism there, if I’ve ever seen it. Is the only way to fight all this commercialism by dying in obscurity? 

As a younger man, not that I am old or anything like that, but in the days before all that makes up the obligations of my current existence, I used to rant and rave about the idea of regretless living. Such a fool, I know. And though still a fool in a great many ways, perhaps in perpetuity, this jester has learned enough to gather some wisdom.

And I suppose the wisdom to come dribbling from my mind at this time would be this- the regrets of life are ultimately unavoidable. Sure, they can be mitigated and managed. You can learn to live with all sorts of histories and deeds, both self-made and those inflicted by others. And the truth is, that you must. That is if you plan on living any kind of life worth living.

But they cannot be avoided, not forever. Because you can never experience everything, no matter how rich the desire is to do just that. It all runs out eventually. So, within that choices must be made. And sometimes, or lots of times, depending on who you are- the wrong choice gets made. Or the choice gets made for you. And throughout even a relatively short lifetime, both of those impacts will be made at various points.

The idea, were you to ask me, is to learn to make the best of whatever bed you make, or whatever else might come your way. This is not a recommendation for settling, though. Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe we are at our best we the spirit is set to benevolently fight against seeming and malicious impossibilities. Doesn’t guarantee your hopes will be accomplished. The truth is, they likely won’t, certainly not as you might have imagined. The balance, which I believe to be a life long dynamic act, is to find peace, even if fleeting, between those worlds of brightest imaginations and grimmest of realities.

Simple enough, right? Also, one of the most difficult concepts of the human condition. One that I struggle with regularly, in ebbs and flows of severity, with this particular phase of life seeming exhaustingly difficult.

So, I try and remind myself of all that I’ve already been through, as I still sit here, typing away at a passion that at the moment makes very little pragmatic sense. Because for all the times this feels like a waste or exercise in ego-based futility, I know there have been at least a few numerous occasions where this makes something akin to sense. And that can be applied in other aspects, even those in a current state of struggle or stagnation.

And if I can help out others, I will. Even for all the times I failed to do so, and there are big ones, believe you me- I know it is still always better to try to make this life better than to passively accept the destitution. Even when it doesn’t seem that way.

Perhaps I should get better at asking and accepting assistance myself, but let’s not get crazy. We haven’t got all evening, and there is plenty still left to do.

Maybe next week. Or maybe not. We shall see.