missing the point

There was this woman I used to run with in college. I think of her as "old" but she was probably only in her mid 30s and that was old to me then. She told me I had an "old soul" and that made me feel really cool and mature at the time. Now I believe it means I'm just jaded before my time. Years later, while celebrating a friend's birthday at a bar, I pointed out that I was the youngest in the group. Then my friend told me that I got "bonus years" for having a kid. Having a child has aged me a bit I guess. It has put this weird pressure on me to figure everything out. It's like I have to hurry up and find the meaning of life before my son grows up and becomes aware that I am just another person who knows nothing. He'll someday find that just because I have always told him what to do, doesn't mean I hold any kind of authority in the real world. That any idiot can have a child. It's easy. And you don't have to be smart, nice, or even CPR certified.

There is so much I don't understand. I just don't know how to teach the world to someone who knows nothing. I have come up with a game plan, and that is to expose my child to as much of the world as my heart will allow and hope he develops his own healthy view of it. Maybe he will come up with the answers that have always eluded me. The things I do know make very little sense to me and I'm better off not knowing them.

You can convince yourself that you want what you have or that you need something more. You can see love as a choice, an emotion or a declaration born of necessity. You can work hard and receive nothing or everything, but there's never a guarantee. Sometimes you get what you deserve and sometimes you have to take what you think you're entitled to. You can try so hard to forget things, that eventually you truly can't remember. You can try a little peace and quiet and if that doesn't work, fill yourself up with people and noise. You can play these games because it makes life pass more quickly, or slowly, whichever you prefer. You can keep dashing between opposing extremes until you are too exhausted to care and then you can stop thinking about life and just breathe.

On cold mornings you can see your breath. Believe in it because it is proof that you are living. And life doesn't have to mean anything. You should just allow it to happen because it will happen despite the conflicting meanings you have tried to attach to it. If you try too hard to find the meaning of life, you'll miss the point. It will happen before you figure out what it meant.