On the one hand, if we are somewhat aware, up and running, the corner cut man having restored some life in us, we struggle to put off being conditioned. While we struggle, as we haltingly catch our breath, we walk into some awareness, some sense of self that happily creates doubt and dissonance in us so that we can clearly see our way.
Before we can get started, we often die. Timing is beyond our control. So much of our lives are contingencies that we cannot lift ourselves into flight. What I like about Sisyphus is his realization that the gods, the mountain, the hernia-giving boulder, the curse itself, the judgment made on him was all bullshit. What mattered was not only the struggle, as he defined it –most important, but an inner resiliency he did not choose — it was a happenstance, as I interpret it; another man would have cracked.
The myth is a happenstance. We are all different kinds of happenstance. It is what we do with the cards given us; a little bit more than that needs to be added. Who we are is a lucky break in instances; we really, like our shape, our blood chemistry, have little do with our uniqueness. Fred Astaire was a magnificent dancer; it was a given, he just had presence of mind to hone his craft. Many of us have it, but don’t know what to do with it, and many of us have no idea we have it, and so effort is never made to exercise talents. And some of us are just blown off the surface of the earth, to fertilize, perhaps, another errant human being in the making.
While we play craps with our lives, some of us don’t get that we are crapshooters. Randomness drives people nuts; order and sense sedates us. I understand, I feel, the terror beneath disorder, but my reading of life, is that I can drop dead right now. Given that, to plan life inordinately is to be not a little psychotic. To count on anything in life is to be unwise, and not a little naive. To live life moment to moment sounds bravely wise, to me, but such moments are not guaranteed. What is left, I suppose, is to wake up in Oro Valley, look through the window slats, see Mt. Lemmon smoking, feel the sun’s rays, and to thank chance — not god — and circumstance, for the granting of another day, often unlived, but grateful for the allowance nature has granted us. Sometimes we have to trust in nothing.
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