“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
– Corinthians 5:32

It’s funny how quickly life passes you buy. One moment, you’re a starry-eyed teenager in Junior High, and the next, you’re just over thirty and facing the realisation that everything you were raised to believe in and look forward — the nuclear family, the picket fence, the stable, dependable job with union benefits — was all just an opiatic ruse to keep you trudging along until you found that place in the cog as a gear, pin or valve.

Credit: Stefan Lins

It sounds depressing, but I don’t think it needs to be. I mean, sure, you lose touch with so much certainty and so many promises as you grow up, but you also lose touch with so many certainties.

That’s it folks: it’s done. Everything you were raised to believe in and aspire to was a farce. But that’s okay. It’s okay because if you think back hard and far enough, that seemed like kind of a bum deal, and it’s okay because now you get to make and reshape your own destiny.

It’s like the man said: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

Fuck it, hombre: your destiny and fate (or whatever) are in your own hands. And sure, that’s a lot of pressure — it’s a lot of responsibility. But a man who walks his own path can choose to walk barefoot if he wants to — he doesn’t have to walk in someone else’s shoes.

Credit: Dr. Wendy Longo

Look at that: this sentence closes the 250 word mark. That makes this a veritable blog post (for whatever that’s worth), and if I can’t be a man of letters and profound thoughts, then at least I can be a man of deep linguistic conviction: I can master this English and all its meta-languages to the point that I can get my point across to you — whether it’s worth hearing or not.

Of course, I haven’t figured out what that point it yet, and I don’t care to. I’m old and embittered enough “to know” that you can’t change anyone’s mind. The best you can hope for is to help make up the minds of people who havent’ done so yet. And even that’s a misleading omen.

That’s the problem with people: those with conviction and integrity and chutzpah have probably made up their mind a long time ago, and those without it are lost causes that you can only hold on to as long their attention deficit will allow.

Credit: Dimitris Papazimouris

The truth is that most of us are gobshytes. That doesn’t make us bad people. It just means  that we’re not good people — and I think that that’s what most of us are looking for: good people that we can count on and depend on.

But alas, you can’t blame us for our flaws. Or can you?

Fuck it. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Let us drink and eat today for tomorrow we die…