I am flying back to Pennsylvania from Seattle. Excellent visit. I realized an interesting perspective on life at dinner last night. I was sitting with both of my aunts and their little two year old son discussing the art of growing up. Mainly the comparisons to learning how to live life from a 27 year old perspective versus that of a two year old. Turns out they don't differ by much. When I grasped the concept of how much incredibly, newly, amazingly beautifully complex things this little human is coming to terms with every single second of every single day, I realized how amazingly intelligent this little guy was. I also realized just how amazingly stupid I am. It is, unfortunately, a side effect of aging. This little life form is constantly accepting brand new things to be absolutely true and only hesitates at the blatantly contradicting. It seems that the older we get, the longer we hesitate to accept things to be true. We become stuck in our ways. The important part is to recognize it.
We were discussing a change that happens in your late 20’s. It seems to happen to a lot of people and those who don’t experience it have some super epic melt down around the age of 45 and label it a "mid life crisis". This way they don’t feel so alone when questioning everything they had deemed truth for the previous 44 years. It also seems to claim a lot of lives of creative minds. I speak of the infamous "27 Club".
I have spent the better part of my life idolizing Kurt Cobain. Part of my adventure out to Seattle was to feel closer to something that created such an extraordinarily creative mind like his. Although he was a member of the fore mentioned "club", I don’t think the coincidence of actually being 27 is relevant. I believe there is a reevaluation of life at this stage for everyone and the way we handle it can and will greatly effect the type of lives we live, or don’t live. I feel that the purpose for life prior to this point is to seek death itself. The closer one gets to it is just a testament to the strength of that individuals soul/spirit/life force. Some spirits push things too far while others ignore the primitive attraction towards death altogether. Then there is the beauty of how we deal with this near death experience, or lack there of for the play it safe bunch.
On July 28th 2015, I definitely could have died. That was just one of many nights that I pushed my experience in this body to it’s limit. Except this one was pretty fucking epically close to crossing that line, resulting in two broken heels and the inability to walk for several months (I just recently ditched my wheel chair). My Dad was 28 when he ran his Harley into a farm tractor, coming to 40 feet up in the air in a pine tree with a broken back looking down on an accident scene. He assumed he was dead. The EMT's thought he was dead. Turns out he was very much alive and refused an ambulance ride only to travel home, drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniel's, then realize his back hurt. He broke his back, neck, pelvis and was soaked with internal bleeding. Today he bench presses 400 lbs and still has a drinking problem. My aunt shipped out to sea to re-enact the tales from her childhood of Moby Dick and Robinson Caruso. My sister died of a drug overdose. I jumped off a roof. We were all testing our limits of this dimension and none of us will ever be the same as we were before.
After this hunt for the inevitable, if you are still around, there is this epic moment of light in life. You hit an apex of darkness and as you shyly peak around the illuminated corner, your brain shifts into realizing the power of life. It is common to have children at this point in ones development and begin to appreciate life through the eyes of an infant. Suddenly everything is new and has meaning again. Although this is beautiful, there is still an undeniable attraction and appreciation for those who pushed it too hard. But why would you Brendan? You just said you had started to see the meaning in life again. Mainly because I don’t feel that life just takes place in this reality.
I tried to come up with a cool analogy last night as I tossed and turned in bed but instead I came up with a shitty one and decided it was good enough. Here it is:
Have you ever light the fuze of a mortar firework and as you turn to run for safety it goes out? For a few seconds everyone stands around and stares at it, then at each other, then at it, then at each other and suddenly it lights back up on it’s own! This is great because if it didn’t re-ignite, that meant it was some poor asshole's duty to attach an open flame to the end of his extended arm and turned away face to light that sucker back up. The people came to see fireworks dammit! Think of yourself, you, whatever your name is, are a ball of fire. One day you decide to go and play with a fuze, aka this earthly body. The fire gets inside that fuze and starts burning and sparking and moving and traveling but at some point (around 20 years or so) there is going to be a major wet spot in that path. Some go as plan and make no detours to their destination while others pause briefly along the way. The fire inside the fuzz that burns out early becomes smoke just the same as the ones that blast high in the sky and explode for the "oohhs" and "ahhhs" of the crowd. I think that the best fireworks are the ones that add the most amount of pause before reigniting.
