Half Century More Than I'm Worth

Milestone

"Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday Dear Patrick, Happy Birthday to me".  There won't be a "you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too" stanza this year.  Not for my fifty first.

I'm not impressed with much about myself, or my life.    But I find myself deeply affected by the milestone of having lived a half century.
It is not an over reaction, or dramatic, to state that I've

had more dark days than light in my lifetime.  In fact, I'm still learning how to function in lengthy periods of optimism, and growth.  I am one of those people who asked himself, on numerous occasions, if life was worth living.  I've sat in silence and assessed the depth of my will, and calculated whether it would be enough.  I've had periods of loneliness that made me question how I managed to drive everyone I loved, away.

Today, on my fifty-first birthday,  I'm aware that the depths I've experienced are responsible for what's held me here.  If you've genuinely asked yourself if life's worth living, and you're here, you answered yes.  If you've ever questioned your will to continue, and made the crossing, you know you underestimate the quality of fortitude within you.  If you've ever believed your loneliness is deserved, or your fault, you know, beyond a doubt, that you've never been truly alone.  You don't traverse those symptoms on your own.  You receive assistance from something outside yourself.  You're assisted by the entity that trusted you to endure.  Fifty years of that, is fifty more than I'm worth.

Anyone lacking in those direct experiences will label you insane.  You may be evaluated, and medicated, and put aside.  That's alright.  Nobody needs to understand, but you.  Doubt, and skepticism, are powerless over what's true.

There's nothing novel about this riddle, nothing contemporary in the equation.  It's the same one that's been reappearing since Eden.  Those with genuine faith are distrusted by those who's faith is uncertain.  In things of this sort you either know, or you don't.  No one can say why one person sees what another cannot, and no one is qualified to anoint one over the other.  Uncertainty remains because uncertainty is the most important part of the equation.

Final Countdown 

Today marks the beginning of my fifty-second year.  The dying year, according to a 12 year-old's vision. Whether I actually die or not is irrelevant to me.  Death is beside us all, anyway, in its nonsensical appearance.  One day a 747 cartwheels down a runway.  It's torn to shreds, and engulfed in blue flames.  And people survive with just a few scratches.   On another day, a postman pulls his truck over to eat lunch.  He parks beneath the same sycamore tree he's parked under for 15 years.  Only today, as he's nibbling away at his bologna sandwich there's a 'crack!' and a 'thud' announcing the fall of the termite weakened limb that crushed him in his seat, and ended his life.  There is no security from death outside of Denial.  It's gonna get all of us.

It doesn't, however, want to surprise any of us.  That's why it introduces itself to every child when they are old enough to understand.  It sweeps in and makes the bunny stop hopping, or the fish stop swimming.  It keeps the first bird you hit with your BB gun, flightless.  It wants you aware that you're finite, and someday you won't get up again.  It's death's version of "1, 2, 3 Ready or Not, Here I Come!"  It wants you to live your life as if it's as fleeting and overwhelming as it actually is.

For years, I told myself I wouldn't take my life for granted, and then I did.  Sometimes, to test how present I am, I make myself stop where there's a crowd of people, and just watch.  I make myself study individual expressions, and body language.  I make myself identify anyone who looks lonely, or disconnected.  I make myself locate a person so insecure with themselves they disrupt, or harm others, in an effort to be seen.  I record the desperation I see, and feel.  It's always there.

I make myself do that to remind myself I do it too.  I do it to feel the sadness that accompanies so much fear.  I do it to preserve compassion, and empathy.  I do it to remind myself my time's running out, and I'm so far from the life I desired.  I do it because I'm ashamed at having pretended not to notice those in need.  During this year, my fifty-second year, it's my priority.