Escaping The Gaudy Life

I live my life these days in the same sense that I experience a mountain, or enjoy the night sky. I do not see it as something that belongs to me. But, it is something I can explore, and attempt to understand.

I suspect that people who think of life as something they “have” and are “responsible for”, are seriously missing the point, not to mention any chance at ever grasping the “real” meaning (or any meaning that is real, and not superfcial such as the kind of meaningless high-sounding rubbish that comes out of a preacher’s mouth). These are the ones who always want more; more pleasure, more money, more power, and more time. In fact, their idea of paradise is an infinite amount of all these things, especially time (i.e. “eternal life”).

I was once like that. I lived the gaudy life; always wanting what I didn’t have and never truly appreciating what I did. I thought beauty was something that had to give me pleasure. But now I know, the most beautiful moments in my life were also the most painful (they don’t have to be, but mine were). I once sought to “decorate” my life with all the superficial, and cheap, trappings that are given such high value as “success” markers in our culture; a college degree, a decent car, apartment, clothes, sporting gear, skiing trips, holiday vacations with family and friends, etc... etc... Instead of paying attention to my life more, and trying to “make something of it” less, I did what most people do; precisely because it was what most people do.

I made my life gaudy; full of cheap meaningless things that only distracted me from the really important lessons that had been waiting for me all my life to understand. Once I had tossed everything that I thought had meaning to me aside, then the lessons came rushing in, and the real meaning became as plain as day.

I have been trying to express this “real meaning” ever since. But, I have come to understand that it can not be expressed with words any more than anything else that is “real”, the moon, the sun, a mountain, the night sky, or love. It is there, and it is as real... even more real... than any of the above, and all the more ineffable. It is WHO I am, not WHAT.

So I no longer worry about making my life “pretty” the way primitives do with their bodies. I no longer make my life gaudy. Instead I enjoy and appreciate the simplest things in ways that bring me more genuine pleasure than my “prettiest” possessions and experiences did in the past. I have met a pretty girl through the mail. And through the mail we have fallen in love. And through the mail we have gotten engaged. In the past, this would have been impossible for me; I would have thought it impossible for anyone. But, my fiancée and I see and understand that our lives are more than what we can see, touch, taste and smell. Our lives are part of an infinitely connected continuum of experiences that can be shared between two people as meaningfully and intimately through the mail as they can in person.

My girl and I understand that we have lived together forever already, and the lives we will promise to share with each other “’till death do us apart”, are no more, and no less, than stars in a night sky.

[J.D. March 16, 2016]