The day of reckoning finally came for me last Wednesday, two days ago. It came for me but then I put it off. I always put it off. That’s just a thing I do; it’s my ‘superpower’, if you will – ‘the superpower of being able to keep on putting off the day of reckoning’. Even I’m amazed as my incredible ability to do this – I wriggle out at the very last minute, somehow, and survive to evade responsibility yet another day. Evading responsibility is my middle name. I come to the end of the road and then, somehow, it isn’t the end of the road. The executioner’s axe is stayed at the last moment, etc, etc.
It’s no fun to be living like this – on borrowed time, so to speak. But – then again – whoever said life was supposed to be fun? There’s a general perception that it is supposed to be fun, it’s true. That particular idea is definitely out there, that particular idea is definitely ‘in circulation’ – but that’s all it is, an idea, and a stupid idea at that. This type of dumb idea a person might have before life actually ‘gets to them’, so to speak. Before the unpalatable truth of the matter eventually dawns on them. Being naïve in this way always makes the blow worse when it does finally land, of course. When the blow finally lands and you realise that life isn’t all about having a great time, after all. Who said it was anyway? How did that story come about? We saw it in the ads or something; we absorbed the idea passively from the social milieu. It just goes into us because we’re supposed to believe that. And then, later – at our leisure – we get to reflect on how dumb we were to actually have believed such a thing. There’s a cruel perfection to it all, I always think, as if some Cosmic Force is delighting in the eradication of our ludicrous illusions.
‘Have you got any ludicrous illusions, buddy?’ the Cosmic Force asks us. ‘Well then let me come and eradicate them for you, bit by bit, piece by piece, until you are freed from them.’ ‘Let me free you…’ the force says, ‘you know I’m going to anyway’. It’s astonishing how different life can look depending upon how you look at it and I am referring here of course to the ‘before’ when we imagined we were entitled to all these things and the ‘after’ when we realized that we weren’t. The ‘after’ when we discover just what it is that we really entitled to. That’s what you call a ‘change of perspective’, I do believe.
Anyway, the day of reckoning came and went for me and I’m still here, incredibly enough. Nothing has changed. Here I am, true to form – scratching my arse and picking my nose. I’m still here the same as usual, living on borrowed time, doing the same sort of stupid shit I always do. ‘Live to do stupid shit another day,’ my motto ought to be. Everyone needs a motto, after all. I couldn’t even tell you what that stupid shit is, off the top of my head. It’s just the type of stupid shit I do, or rather it’s the type of stupid shit that I get caught up in doing because there is no free will in it. The ‘stupid shit’ in question has a life of its own, if you ask me! It just comes along and takes over.
And it’s not really at it just ‘comes along’ either because it never left. It’s just there, serving no purpose at all, and I’m caught up in doing it. I get up in the morning, start doing the stupid shit, carry on doing it all day long, and then – when I get too tired to do it any more – I go to bed and sleep the sleep of the unjust. And it’s not really that I ‘do the stupid shit’ either because it does me. The stupid shit does me every day of my life. Every single day the stupid shit does me. I guess I’m powerless against it, if I were actually to face facts, which I am understandably very reluctant to do. Wouldn’t you be?
