02.07.26
One of the things that I miss about childhood innocence is sobriety. By this, I mean the opposite of apathy. My default as a child… was to care. My default as an adult is to not care.
The older I get, the more I realize about life, the world, and myself. The effect is so demoralizing that unless I consciously put up a fight, I become numb and flat in my outlook on life and in my presence with others. And I lower my life-goals from dreaming big things and loving people well to basically just getting through the next mandatory thing so that I can settle back down into my next comfortable, lazy moment. But I don’t want to be like that—all hazy and illusory-snug. I want to feel; I want to live; I want to grasp life firmly and deeply, not limply nonchalantly. I want to keep the kid me alive. But how do I do that?
How do I stay sober?
How do I keep my head above the mounting piles of continual disappointments, terrible revelations, and deceptively comforting short-term pleasures and stimulations? How do I have the barrage of let-downs that is just normality not desensitize me but awaken me? Not frighten but embolden? Not harden my heart but enliven it? How do I fully and simultaneously appreciate what’s wrong with my life and what’s wonderful about being alive? How do I work up the excellence to take care of my own s*** enough to care for the s*** of others? How do I aim, not for bare-minimum get-by, but for infinity and beyond? How do I shoot for the sky? (Can I even shoot for the sky?) Where are the dreamers and doers? What am I doing with my life? What am I dreaming? Do I even dream anymore?…..
HOW DO I STILL CARE?
These are the kinds of questions I reckon with, and I don’t know right now how they ought to be answered. But after today, I’m pretty sure that at least this must be true: To stay sober—to care—I need to listen and to talk. Listening and talking unlock meaningful experience. The meaning was always there; but I needed another soul to better understand it. Connection with another person can outline and color what I was going to let pass by as a jumble of grays. Again, the picture was always there; I just needed someone else to see it. This is obviously prefaced by the fact that the listening and the talking are being done with the right individuals. If the picture is actually purple, but Billy insists that it is green, then Billy is not giving me sobriety but just another form of drunkenness. Sobriety lives in reality, not delusion.
And as I’m typing these things, I can’t help but think… Thank God for such individuals in my life.
No really. I can’t even begin to describe the mystery of this to me. Like… what is this life? And why do I get to know people who help me have the courage to live it?
I couldn’t say, except that in my heart of hearts, His listening and His talking—deepest, ongoing, and irreplaceable—give me sentiments that to articulate here would spoil their charm.
