Stirring Point

You missed all the signs because they never appeared the way you wanted them to. You jostled from one side to the other, looking for anyone to tell you what to do. You searched for someone speaking a language you understood. Not the tongue of your elders—their words cracked the skin on your lips. And not the language of your peers—they were clueless like you. You were searching for something virgin in the world—a voice that’d carry you toward some sense of purpose.

The alphabet was there, but you had no clue how to use it. And numbers were a daily reminder of your tenuous grasp of life’s basic arithmetic. Your eyes saw the world, but every angle felt shortsighted and compounded your confusion. Most of the time, you found your way by touch, depending entirely on tactile sensations for a sense of understanding. A burned hand on a hot stove over here, a stubbed toe against a wooden threshold over there. Your family tried to guide you with their love and concern. Your brain followed their directions, but the hormones and the penchant for risk arrived all at once. So, you stumbled and worked to survive the chaos of your nights in hopes that you’d make it to morning. The quicksand felt perpetual and ran like a moat around your world. It waited; it tried to claim you. It was hungry for your cells. But death was never a real issue. Not for the invincible.

You picked up the bottle, hoping it would ease your days. You took a drag from that cigarette because the others told you it’d release the tension. Popping a pill promised reprieve from the effort. What effort? Any effort. Simply existing. Life should have been easy. The table has been set for you since birth. But you built your hurdles high and put off learning to jump.

You propped yourself up against the wall of that girl. That girl. You spent your days convinced that her love would somehow save you. Do you recall how she’d tear you down with those eyes? Of course you do. They’d strip you bare and shove you out the door. And you’d stand in the rainstorm of your own mind, cold and shivering, while she looked you over, searching for any sign of vulnerability. Not your Achilles heel. She wanted your honesty and the soft side of your belly. But she left and wandered to the next boy, knowing you’d never show her anything but your shell. She took off her mask; you kept yours on. She called you in from the rain and got nothing in return. A spinning top—that’s what you were—whirling like a drunken dervish caught in a spell of aimless inertia. Behind your confidence sat the shallow puddle of a vacant mind. Your words were empty calories and she needed real nutrients. Smart girls don’t hang around fools forever.

When others discussed real issues, you listened, but all you heard was white noise. Expressions of ambition were foreign and landed like a diagnosed illness. They’d talk about leaving but where would they go? And why would they break this up? Your concerns were local to the sensations of the day. The way the music thumped against your eardrums, the way the whiskey burned as it slid down your throat, the way the sun felt against your cheek when the workday finished. Life was all about playtime. You were a recess kid. 

Work. It took 15 years for you to learn its value and another 5 years to find satisfaction in your tasks. Progress from effort establishes a real purpose in one’s life. Advice felt like a prescription for someone else’s ailment. Advice pulled you down. It could have been a healthy roadmap for the future but you found it prescriptive and diminutive. You could have started this journey to purpose much earlier. No bother, though. The future belonged to others, not you; it belonged to those who planned. The future requires some vision beyond today.

You felt invincible and treated your body as such. The injuries healed quickly but the scars are deep and limit your movement over time. Eventually, you  changed the scars into a narrative you tell over and over. It’s now your story. The sports, the fights—all the accidents. You tell the story of where you’ve been and who you’ve become. Like a rolling snowball, the stories have gathered mass and became your truth. Those scars, however, have stomped on the progress of your well being. You try moving as fast as you used to, but the pains of yesteryear are adding up. You ache in the mornings. Your shoulders crack at will. And your stories? They feel worthless because all you want are healthy joints and unstrained muscles. To hell with stories.

You check your face in the mirror each morning and see the marks of time. These marks are the work of decay. Your story is no longer sweet on your tongue. It tastes like copper, and you want to spit it out. How the hell did you get here? You morphed from a helpless child who grew into a confused young man. You learned to package and sell yourself as someone employable. Now, with a little distance, you rage against your own lies. Not lies crafted to dupe others. Lies you built to fool yourself. 

There will be a day when you wake up and see this whole comedy for the accident it is. You were shot out of a cannon onto Planet Earth, with its protective atmosphere, boundless oceans, and fertile lands. But your time is limited and you spend too much of it watching television, stuffing pop tarts in your maw and dumping styrofoam into the Pacific. From a long view, everyone seems insane. But from the inside, the world is perfectly normal. CNN is normal, disposable K-cups are normal, corn syrup is normal, and 9 hours in front of a computer each day is normal. When you finally catch a glimpse of society’s seams, you realize what a fool you’ve been. So you react, and your new behavior casts you as an oddball. 

Let them call you what they will. You’re not on their roller coaster. Your job in this world is not to bend a knee to the emotions of others. Let the adults, with their anger, their outbursts and their discontent, work themselves into an early grave. Don’t follow them. Go your own way. Learn how to handle those emotions and when they arrive unexpectedly, take a deep breath. If they hang around longer than expected, take another deep breath. These feelings that come? They’re fleeting—even the good ones. Don’t grasp at them.

Of course, you were too young to know better. There never seemed to be an end to the road. You had no clue it would one day stop—a dead end—when the air leaves your chest and you finally close your eyes. Your energy grabs its coat and walks the hallways of your body, searching for the breaker box. You take your last exhale, it flips the main circuit, and the lights shut off. So, it all just ends, eh? Yep, your energy moves on.

Remember, you’re lucky to be alive now. Your needs are met with food, safety and love. These three things make you rich. You have more than any man needs, and now it’s your job to cultivate your own joy. Joy is the product of your right effort—your recognition over time that your mind can solve the problems you both create and encounter. Your mind has the ability to untangle it all. It’ll take some time, but the knots will come undone.