tell me: why are you alive?

no, i’m not talk speaking objectively. yes, i recognize that there are heart functions, hemoglobins, and plenty of synaptic actions and membrane exchanges negotiating the release and capture of their respective na- and k+ that get us through the day. yes, i recognize that if it weren’t for simple charges, everything would fall apart.

but why is it then, that when it comes to life, it seems to be lacking the charge i imagined it would hold when i was twelve? and why does it feel like it’s falling apart, breaking down into its basics?

i’ll be as honest as possible about my day tomorrow: tomorrow, between 6:32am when my alarms start calling for me and sometime around 12am when i’ll succumb to the weights on my eyelids, i will, at best, survive. surviving.. not necessarily living, surviving is, to me, the act of just plainly and somewhat dully getting from time a to time b. it doesn’t require any major input, asking only for mostly preconditioned responses to a largely generic set stimuli.

i am pavlov’s tortured dog. i am p’s complete lack of surprise.

what if, though, life was decided by, hung on the stroke of a typewriter’s key? or the slight of a pen? or the batting of an eye..? would you do anything differently?

well here’s news: life does hang so tenuously. whether you believe in an eye in the sky or in the inevitability of entropy, life is fragile, life ends. reasons come randomly, if at all. there are no mailings with two-weeks notices that announce any termination of service. and no matter your faith in modern medicine, you will, one day, cease to exist.

but that’s unimportant – it’s how you choose to live that matters.

so, today: why are you alive? are you doing what you want to be doing? and, if not, why not? what inhibitions or obstructions are preventing you from complete freedom.. and why haven’t you rid yourself of them?! i’m sure you know but, just as a reminder, you can become, do, make, choose almost any destiny you might want (the details of this argument should be reserved for a much more intense and much less fruitless discussion on the merits and pitfalls of existentialism).

look.. i have a 401(k), a roth ira, and money in the stock market.. i even have life insurance. i have no illusions like, “live every day like it’s your last” or “live like you’ll die tomorrow” or whatever nice little jingle might suggest we live off our sleeves and throw our inhibitions to the wind. while it’s inspirational and might make work for a couple days, putting it into a true, everyday practice is, among other things, selfish, dangerous, and largely self-destructive.

but i have to believe it’s a great folly to wait for something to happen, to wait for something to happen, to confuse survival with living. if a book were being written about you and what you’re doing today.. would you read on? or is the part you would skim and later tell your friends that these are the chapters when you lost interest..? if third-, sixth-, or eleventh-grade you met today you, how would they feel: embarrassed, proud, excited, disappointed..?

now, i have faith in you, reader, that you are intelligent, mostly mature creatures who have used your eyes, ears, nose, hands, tongue, mind, and everything else attached to you quite well up to this point. believing this, i don’t kid myself into thinking i’m telling you something new or revolutionary. i don’t expect any “by god! he’s right!’ from the crowd. there’s a good chance, in fact, you stumbled upon these realities in elementary school, perhaps when you flushed old gills down the pooper or buried benny in the backyard. so no, i’m no prophet here to warn you of the fire and rain we all know will come and go like so many other inevitabilities of life. no, i’m only here to set you down on the couch, shake you a little, maybe slap you in the face a couple times if need be to get you to here the call to “wake up!”

today, in a yet another meeting about the transition to stantec, i watched a face in the crowd and thought about what all this meant to them. i knew they didn’t seem to be taking the change with the cheeriest of attitudes. it got me to thinking about how the change must redefine how they are, how they used to be a big fish in small pond.. and now they’re another business unit, another payrolled-employee, another face in the ever expanding crowd. if it were me, i thought, i could see how it would flip my world on its head, how it would redefine where i was going and what i meant–

and i stopped cold.. was i honestly saying that i define myself, my person, my meaning through my role in the workplace?! wow, i thought.. you’re getting way off base. it’s about time to take a break and get a few things back in order.

so, to begin with, that’s to write more.. even if that does mean more posts in the “incomplete thoughts” category. and it means being less committed to the unnecessary.. the “unnecessary” accounting for a majority of my time loss recently and for my loss of perspective on what’s important. while i know that things won’t start to improve on that front until maybe june, i know my whiteboards and binders will surely help me get there. and it means planning a trip.. not sure where other than it’s definitely not here.. and not for a measly long weekend. 😉

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—i worry that this post might seem overly pedantic. i have to assure you that this post, as well as this entire site, is meant as a personal journal and any time that it might seem i’m being pejorative, it’s meant only to snap myself out of whatever funk it is that i’m in. and if i address you directly as a reader, i’m either still talking to myself or trying to steer you clear of my own mistakes.