Keep Yourself Alive

To All Those Within the Sound of My Voice

When the results are in and the tally of my time spent on this blue speck in the cosmos is presented, I will have to admit that I have led a charmed life. In spite of anything thrown my way now or in the future, I have lived to tell the tale. Not in terms of “everything went my way” so much as “I eventually got over it and walked on”. Believe me when I say that’s a lot harder than it sounds.

People like to focus on the crap that God has tossed their way, obsessing over the loss of a loved one, the difficulty of a strained marriage, daddy used to hit me, or just a bad day, period. Oh, I’m not knocking it entirely. This life owes nobody anything, and it’s the true fool who lives in expectation of it. That bad things happen to everyone isn’t exactly front page news, there’s enough blood and shit to pile to the Moon. People tend to miss the Moon, and see only the shit.

Depending on the severity, relativity of the sequence of events and the stress threshold of the recipient and the fact that there’s no accurate method of scale for how one person copes Vs. another, recovery of your mental health can be more arduous than simply living with the emotional scarring. What happened was traumatic, but the effort required to trim the boat is even MORE so, so why bother? Add the nebulous Human Element to the equation, and overcoming hardship becomes a coin toss. It gets to the point where you can easily see why most people turn to religion, at least temporarily. Nothing else extends quite so overwhelmingly immediate release excepting drugs or alcohol. In all three examples, the effect is always temporary. You will eventually need another fix, more whiskey, extra prayer time, whatever, to make it through the night. I will admit it takes a certain degree of heart to want more from life, to reach for the harder thing. I often think how lucky I was that I couldn’t afford drugs or booze when I was younger, and I just didn’t believe in God. Not a lot of options left, if I wanted to keep breathing I had to walk the hard road.

Everybody has this, by the by. There are no exceptions. Everyone has come to the crossroads (or will be there soon) and had to play chess with the Devil. Not all of us knew the Queen’s Pawn opening, but we all played nonetheless.

For me, though, the good far outweighs the bad. The scary monsters were always vanquished, the nightmares always disappeared into a sunrise, the scales were usually balanced with a bit more percentage my way. How many others have that as well? I’m willing to bet more than those that actually admit it.

As I look around this house filled with artifacts and relics from other countries I have been, rare books I have read, several computers I have…obtained, a fridge full of expensive Belgian Ales and a wife whose love I have never questioned, I wonder if it’s all a dream sometimes. I have great friends who aren’t beyond dragging my ass of to a pub for a beer, dropping by for some curry or going out to the garage to train a bit.

I need to be looking for a job more seriously than I am. Caren wants me to finish a book or two first, and she’s willing to suffer long hours at a job she hates for me to fulfill this. She looks me in the eye every morning and says “I believe in you. Get to work.” That’s my wife, y’all. I can’t look at myself in the mirror without having worked my fingers to the bone every day because of her, and I do it gladly.

Every day I fight myself over feelings of doubt. It comes at me like a locomotive, and hangs around like a houseguest with no job prospects. I have a couple of books that I have no idea how they will end. Where am I gonna get that? No ending means no book. How long will it be before I finally nail a good draft? What if nobody likes it? Wouldn’t this all be a waste of time if that happened? Maybe I should just stop here, I don’t have another idea anyway. But I’ve spent so much time trying, what will I tell Caren?

One thing people who are in dire straits hate hearing is the asinine pep-talk of someone constantly saying “Well, look on the bright side!” all the time. You want to choke the shit out of people like that, and I endorse it wholeheartedly. Speaking of things therapeutic, it’s as good an example as any. But I want to say to anyone out there who is right now kicking with both feet just to get one more gasp of breath in, struggling just to keep the electricity on, feed your kids, make a deadline, the ones who don’t want to open their eyes because it’s so black they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel:

There will come a time.

You will be looking BACK on this instead of staring it in the face. It will be the past, beyond, behind you, something that was simply an instance that contributed to your present self, instead of being your whole world right now. But you have to be alive to see it. You have to persevere.

You can choose the higher path, but you have to be around to enjoy it once it’s traveled. You don’t have to fight to the death, just don’t be the one to quit first.

When you want to stop and drop, think about how lovely it would be if you just gave up right there and collapsed. Imagine lying down, taking a breath and letting the world pass by without caring a smidgen.

Then keep running anyway, as if to spit in the eye of everyone else betting on the other horse. Fuck them, you’re running for YOU. It’s not about proving anything. It’s about living your life. You don’t have to win. Just cross the damn finish line.

Keep yourself alive.

It’s not my line, but it’s the best one I have, and I have always lived by it.

Now get off your ass.