We are on borrowed time

I heard this description of life: It’s a bus ride that has no stops. You just keep going faster and faster

… the only way out is a crash: Death.

I think that sums up the gravity of the situation we are all in.

Please don’t consider this a negative posting about life. Life is actually quite fun for me right now.

I have a 17-month-old little man who is the joy of life.. My wife and I have been forever changed by his existence in our world. I have a wonderful family. Friends I cherish. We have jobs. We have a roof over our heads.. we have food when we are hungry. And I have an iPhone, and all the other technology that comes with life these days, too.

In the past two weeks I have been to two funerals. I will keep the overly personal information out, and just say that one was for someone who was 95 and a World War II POW. Another was for an uncle who lived to the truly ripe old age of 94. Both were pushing 100 when they met their respective final resting places. They both had long lives and lots of memories.. they both had stories.. both had a memories.. both had loved ones, cherished friends.. We all have stories, too. No matter the person.. From the richest to the poorest. From the oldest in the world to the child that dies at birth. There IS A MEANING to life.. right?

After contemplation, I have determined that we have become overly busy with our selfish pleasures of newsfeeds and campaign stats and sports stats and bla bla bla bla bla. At least I have.

I have neglected so much in the real world because of the online world. The internet and technology have become habits instead of pleasures. It went from being a novelty to a way of life. We all have been touched by the net bug. We are addicted!! Addicted to virtual reality. Addicted to virtual everything……virtually nothing.

But back to life for a second. REAL LIFE, not virtual.
What is the purpose to all this? Why ask! you know there is no answer. Lots claim to know the truth. Many others ponder it forever. In the end we don’t have a clue. What happens when we do die!? Again, here.. no word from anyone who did perish. We are left to wonder if near death experiences are really experiences of truth or just brain waves going awry. We are left to question tenets of religion.. question all things.

In the net age we have oodles of knowledge at our fingertips. All we have to do is Google or Bing it or MetaFilter it.. or whatever it. Do people even ask Jeeves anymore? Or AltaVista? .. Asta La Vista ..

Search results would amount to tons of data if you printed it on paper. But in our paperless society paper doesn’t exist anymore… right? Even though a paper-stack of bills sits next to me, that snail mail sent me, that was licked by some underpaid secretary in a cubicle maybe even AGHAST! with a typewriter…somewhere in the world.

There are bits and bytes of data flying around the world at a record pace.

And with all this knowledge you’d think by now someone would have found the meaning of life! The closest I know that found something was John Clease in MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE. The death penalty introduced to us in that show was, well, one many men wouldn’t mind having.

The information superhighway.. that is what it was once dubbed. Now it’s filled with potholes and dead sites that have dead ends.

Where does it all go in the end, though?

No where.. bits and bytes go bye bye for us.

Our bodies were dust and to dust they return. Despite the big plans we have to strive for big goals, we are cut down by something..whether it’s fate, God, time.. science. Whatever you believe. You can be five months, 15, 35, or 95. All dust.

So after this week, with two funerals (and a wedding, congrats bro), one can only leave the day with a renewed perspective on this strange place called earth.

A new lease on life!?

Not a chance…

A constantly expiring lease?

Now that is more like it..

Winds of change. The stench it is all the same all over again.

I noticed something tonight.. My area, for those who don’t know, really doesn’t change much. If you travel away for a while and come back you’ll feel like you are stuck in the same age.. which has benefits and negatives all in the same. You know what ground you stand on. But you also don’t reap in the glory that changing of scenery can offer.

Tonight, as the typical early spring breeze blew and the sun set, I noticed something. Maybe it was a revelation—one that I will botch up and not do justice by even typing it out in rambling thought. But the breeze blew, birds’ chirps resounded around me like a chorus of warmth, and the sun finally gave way to the night sky. And I thought: Is earth just a classroom in which people roll through now and then for a lesson? Or instead, are we constantly rolling through the same planet? Are we recycling over and over again on earth, trying to get this right? I don’t know. I don’t even know where my thoughts took me.. 

I think it was one of those moment in time split second glimpse of the thin veil that divides this realm and another. 

I mean, I looked at this sunset with birds singing and wondered if it is the first time this generation of birds were here? Maybe they were just recycled and came back again since they were so good at filling a spring evening with refreshing music. Maybe. And maybe I was here before. And saw that same sunset for centuries. Maybe? Getting a little weird yet?

Think of it.. if your each down into the water and grab a fish, what do you do the fish, besides let it gag and garble to death? You make it see a vision of a whole new world .. even if it is only for seconds. 

I think from time to time, when we have momentary lapses of reason, we chip away at the shroud that keeps us from understanding a higher purpose. Or power. Or … nothing?

Maybe there is nothing.
And maybe there is something.
And maybe there is reincarnation.
And maybe there is everything.

I just don’t know.

I bet you don’t either. Which makes my abhorrently un-understandable diatribe I just typed all the more ‘out there’..