I am

When I was diagnosed with brain cancer, it was only a couple of days before chaos rushed forth from the recesses of everywhere to fill areas that felt like only just a few moments prior were occupied by extremely tangible and solid constructs of a reality that I manufactured from the artificial desires of success posters, and catchy clichés. Within the span of what felt like seconds, I was surrounded by an onslaught of confusing and foreign medical babble that stripped away the carefully crafted foundations that I had painstakingly built over a lifetime: I was once again a 13-year-old child that had just realized that death and mortality were a very real part of living and not a distant and unimaginable future to be dealt with by an older, and therefore… somehow… a wiser and calmly accepting man in possession of years of hard won knowledge and peace of mind; a man that truly lived and is ready to pass on . It is now unfortunately apparent though, that that was a romantic scenario that was never meant to be mine, because I am still too young.

The fabric of society, false in every sense of the definition, is easily understandable by even the simplest among us and is therefore worn as foolish gaudy and grotesque layers of protection against the cold harsh truth of our actuality. Adam Smith said, “With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.” We are like greedy crows in search of shiny objects to occupy, distract and create a sense of purpose which in actuality exists only in the fact that we are incomplete and unprepared for the unknown reality that we must all face. And now stripped of all material pride and possessions, and without any braggart marks of opulence to provide for distracted focus of worth and comfort, I have been left naked and wanting for external warmth, because I am so cold.

Several times throughout the span of even the most trivial, mundane and average of existences, there will be a crumbling of the false material reality and moments of brief harrowing glimpses into the vast unknown and unanswered questions of purpose and reason. Our innate inability to comprehend the very nature of our own being and existence has caused us all to recede into the constructs of disillusionments of purpose that is based solely on weightless and unimportant goals of material for the sake of material alone. The reality of disease has poked holes into my artificial shelter of comfort and reminds me that I am but a small creature hiding from a massive and scary unknown. And like the rest of the world, when all material warmth has been shed, I stand in complete knowledge of nothing other than the fact that I am very alone.

Only the souls of the naïve and wide-eyed children have not yet learned to grasp the fear and mortality of the flesh and the solitude of being and can truly and simply stand free on the precarious periphery of the abyss and stare with wonderment and an honest appreciation of the world around them. This innocent appreciation begins to fade as we become old enough to ask questions that are impossible for us to realize. I honestly feel that the tasted fruit of sin was not any kind of knowledge in and of itself; it was instead the question of a knowledge that we could never completely fathom, let alone answer. I am now falling into that dark and unimaginable future that has eluded forever all of my repeated and restated grasping questions and empty reasoning. 

And here I am feeling still too young, so cold and alone…and I am really afraid.