Simmering in Mediocrity

Between a shooting star and a flickering light, you don't have much of a choice.

Between a mushroom cloud and a retirement home, you don't have much of a choice.

Between this life and the next, you don't have much of a choice.

And between this life and death, you don't have any.

A bang, not a whimper. Sonance, not sound. You want to make a splash, a crash, a burst, a blast. You don't want to peter out. Peter doesn't even want to peter out. But you know, you're still young. You're always still young, because you haven't stopped your learning or your education, or you're working your first job or your second job or your first string of jobs, putting your life on hold, putting your summer on hold, putting your youth on hold because you need money or relaxation or perspective or vision or a whole giant bucket of bullshit.

You're aging, already.

Go back far enough in time, you should have fathered children by now. Courted a woman. Courted a man, whatever. Far enough back, sure you lived on dirt floors in huts slathered in excrement and piss, but you lived. You prospered, you beget offspring. No frustration. No greater change to the world, because you saw what you did. You realized who you were by the time you could kill a lion with your bare hands, no legal age limit attached.

But, in the meantime, in Western culture, modern culture, whatever you want to call it--the Great Satan? I laugh--you're stewing. You're pressure-cooking, you're simmering, you're basting. You're the turkey in the pot, the ham roast in the oven, the biscuit in the tray. You're biding your time, developing skills and acquiring knowledge to make your difference in the world, in due time.

But. There's no such thing as due time.

Take on those projects. Those initiatives. Those attempts at self-improvement; they won't get you very far, but they will get you farther away from where you stand now. Which direction, it's too soon to say. Play out your cards, and you'll probably see, when your cells turn to dust, it didn't matter. Self-improve for the sake of self-improvement. Self-improvement to achieve something, well, you better hope that achievement means a fucking lot more to you than life itself.

A friend once said, there are few things worth fighting for. The right to life. Love. Land. Liberty. What about fighting yourself to throw away your temporary distractions and enjoyments, your momentary pleasures and excitements for the greater good? For your own greater good, for your own sake, for your own future self?

What is it about self-proclaimed youth that seems so utterly foolish and irresponsible? Is youth something to brag about? Is youth not wasted on ourselves?

Maybe the lesson is, you shouldn't sit indoors and write on your computer all day.

Maybe the lesson is, you shouldn't meander through life, seeking hits of pleasure and hot food.

Maybe the lesson is, there is no lesson.

So maybe between the flash and the whimper, between the crater and the puddle, you do have a choice. It's not much of one, but maybe it's there.

Maybe there is nothing worth leaving behind.