Box

This life is made up of fools and philosophers and all sorts in between. Your Daddy is on that bell curve somewhere. Whether he's at the apex or on the fade isn't of consequence. He's on that curve. Just like you. Just like everyone else out there.

I see people worry over unnecessary things. All the time. I see them fret over happenstance & consequence. What's up with this cough? Why does my knee ache? Will I make that payment? Silly little things that only matter in the moment but never, ever, and will never, matter in the end.

Believe me.

The general consensus is that our "things" will get taken away. Our cars. Our lungs. Our Lives. Our Possessions. The constant threat of loss drives us in such a manner that we don't acquire that one little thing that is truly Free and Guaranteed.

Time.

I want you to do a fundamental thought project with me. I want you to imagine a box that holds all of those things that you hold dear. I want you to pretend to put them all in one secure container. All of your loved ones, all of your toys, all of those things that define how you see this world, how you interact in this world, how your world revolves around you. Stuff them all into that box. Your box.

Are they all in there? Is everything about you in that box?

Now look at that box.

Now blink.

Now that box is gone.

No, seriously. It's gone. Adios, see ya next year, gone.

What do you do now? What defines you now? What do you have to show for yourself now? Who are you now?

You do what you've always done, defined in the same way you always were, showing all you have as you've always tried & being who you've always been. Time gives you each of those luxuries. Nothing else. Nothing else & nothing more. Your box never really mattered.

All that really mattered was the amount of time you thought you owned it.

Bengali

I think I've paid my dues. I hope I have. First world problems aside, they're all I've known so I'm comfortable in saying that.

I'm feeling strange tonight. My skin doesn't fit quite right. I know why and yet I want to say I don't know why.

I don't know what to make of this thing called "life". It's bizarre. It's a bit unsettling. I'm aware that the ever changing rules cannot apply and yet I try my best to apply them.

Sometimes I feel like the goldfish that you took out of the bowl. You didn't do it to watch it struggle, you just did it to watch it live. You had no idea that the act of taking it out of that bowl doomed it.

I just don't know what my bowl is. For the life of me, I don't know who took me out of the one I had.

Maybe it was Me.

I can betroth my experiences in this life to you but it will not change what you endure. It can only enhance your interpretation of endurance by way of what your old Man recalled at this moment in time, in this one place we inhabit.

People will forget what you said. They most certainly will eventually forget what you did. But I swear to you, above all, this one thing. They will never forget how you made them feel.

That's all they carry with them. That's every one's After.

This world is an inconvenient train station where we're all jostling for position on the platform. If I could give you any bit of sound advice it would be to not buy a ticket. Just hop the fence, blend in with the crowd & when no one is looking... hijack that son of a bitch.

Ride it to where the winds cannot recall your name. There you'll find freedom. There you'll find truth. There you'll find your own After. That's what we're all looking for... as it were.

And always Talk Hard.

Even in Bengali.