It is such a short time we’re here, isn’t it? Even when it seems to be the otherwise, the truth of our fleeting existence is never far from mind. A blink of being. A brief story told of our lives, with our lives.

This evening, it feels as though I am either thoughtless, or so over capacity with thinking that I can make little sense of any of the existential static and hum hounding my consciousness. And yet, perhaps foolishly, some sense will be attempted. By none other than your humble narrator, of course.

Both humorous and divine, the way each of us beings march forward through time. Collecting as we go the experiences and interactions with other souls. And what grows and fades with the onward click of that universal clock. For even if we go nowhere through space, we are ever pressed forward through time. So even if we do nothing but sit in a chair staring out through a window, we pass through our minute eternities, growing older with each day. Each season. Every year.

Something about the spring, perhaps. That cyclic rebirth burst forth with abundant sensation, Sight and sound, and so on. Every echo and aroma, rich in clarity even when confounded. And the kindred creatures we meet along the way. Some lasting stalwart through the ages, while others but a furious burst of light left lingering even decades after their exit from our perspectives. Some to stay, some to return, and some to leave in irreversible ways. By our choices or theirs, or just through chaos of our lives- prominence can flow and fade and change either I from them, or they from whatever me you might make your home. Some glad enough to be rid of, others so impossibly aching to have back. And plenty others in the oft occurring but inexplicable partings all too common even on our tiny, ephemeral space rock. Those we seek and those that appear with an unpredictability provoking our perspective to be forever changed.

So, sitting in my space, still disheveled from the weekend that left me full and fermenting with existentialism, I wonder- what is it that I might write next?

I suppose I don’t believe enough in fate and destiny to subsequently adhere to the thought that our purpose can be anything beyond a fabrication of self both inwardly and outward in some social fashion with our fellow sentient simian planetary compatriots. That there isn’t really something that any of us are ‘meant’ to do, but rather only the purpose found proposed from some future fantasy, or an accumulation after the fact according to the actions and interactions we achieve and receive. That we conjure from our unconscious or elsewhere, this idea of self that shapes the making of the future via the fabricated functions we formulate.

I do hope you understand that I don’t believe purpose itself to be false or fallacy. It is only that it arrives not from some beyond place, outside of this reality, but rather is assembled and aggregated from the combination of occurrences and actualizations amalgamated along the way. At any point, theoretically, you could choose to abandon any proposed purpose for the procurement of some other. And the reason that happens infrequently has not to do with higher powers or inescapable fates, but rather that our meaning aspirates itself and arrives from within whatever it is that this consciousness is. Even to accept one’s fate is a choice made from within our hearts and minds, or those of others that have set themselves on interaction and impact.

From this, conflict arise, often times with ease, and while one purpose may defeat some other housed elsewhere by other souls- this does not make one purpose more true or benevolent, no matter what our tales of heroes and messiahs and monsters might say. Then, of course, there is the conflict that goes about inside. The sort that rumbles when what meaning we attempt to define ourselves by fails or falls short. Even if only temporary, what we perceive as our destined ambition cannot help to fall, whether a little or often, when the world wills outcomes in ways we’d wish were otherwise, rippling the cerebral and cardiac aspects of self with ‘what should have beens’ and ‘what were supposed to be’.

And within all of this, onward I fight and find ways for my own purpose to continue, for all the future that I plan to continue make into present, before fading to the past. It is why I sit here now, week after week, and string together rambling words to derive some sort of meaning out of what could easily be argued as meaningless. It is why I held a score or so of musicians in these four walls a few days ago, for the sharing of sonic art and expression. It is why I keep fighting, impossibly so. It isn’t that I’m stupid, perhaps tragically. It is that the grandeur of my self-made beliefs might bring about some greater good, even if only for moments here and there. That even in meaning originating from self-service, something gets shared with those going along on adjacent paths. Parallels purported and proposed to a larger benevolence, invoking chain reactions the likes of which I may never understand, and plenty that I certainly will never see.

And none of this is some claim of greatness or glory. My guilts and griefs make sure to keep all this from hypocritic narcissism. Not ignorant to my sins, dear reader, and doing what I can to make amends where possible. To atone in good deeds for all my bad. Breaking even on morality, sometimes even maybe getting a little ahead. Of at the very least, fighting to not fall behind and absorbed into the abyss of disassociation.

Because even all this self-made purpose still means something. Because nihilism always resolves in spite of itself. As there is little more freeing than knowing that only so much matters in our lifetimes, and even less so the more you zoom out in time. A bunch of former and future dust, mucking about and bumping into each other. Yet when many micro meanings are geared towards action upright and quasi-righteous, the inspiration can accumulate and reverberate beyond just ourselves. And even when such personal destinies call for disaster to all the otherwise, unification to a benevolent opposition often finds its way to the frontlines.

For while our purpose may be our own, that doesn’t mean it is for just us. And while it all might be contrived on varying levels, that doesn’t mean it can’t be important. And while good is not a guarantee, it doesn’t mean that we are incapable of finding and making some for ourselves, and others. So, fight for your purpose, says I, especially if it does more than just provoke and protect your own ego. Because you never know when the witnessing of your struggle for a bit of optimism might appear as the brightest light to some other soul when they needs it. And in that same vein, I would say, stay open for the lights of others, even, or especially when in unpredictable ways.

Fight for your purpose, even if it all ends up as nothing someday. Because for now, if you’re reading this, it isn’t quite oblivion. Even if when this reaches you I am no longer on this physical plane, please, take the purpose you need from whatever I make or leave behind.

It is why it matters that I write on these evenings, even when I don’t know what to say. And why you should sing and share such songs with others, even when it doesn’t feel like capability is going that way. Because you can always play music. You don’t have to, but it would be better if you did.