Highlow

Highlow

There exists within me an ideation of the best version of me. And it would mean I’m like a 6’5 buff guy with white-guy dreadlocks who also has a jetpack and can sing in perfect pitch. This has also been my New Year’s Resolution for about seven years, secretly. (It’s not panning out)

So as a consolation, I’ve been thinking about what is the best version of me given the present circumstances.

The present version of me is near middle-aged, renting a dumpy apartment, no kids except for my Yoncho and Tibby, earning decent enough money at a job with no grand prospects, driving a car from George W. Bush’s first term and now the brakes are fucking up on me.

I imagine a lot of people will read the preceding paragraph as Grim, but I’ve never been much for keeping pace with my peers or fitting in with the group. In fact, I’ll have you know, I have a kind of disdain for people who bow to societal pressure. There are millions of people my age who put on Macy’s sweaters and pose with their kids in front of their fireplaces to send out christmas cards (also they owe multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars on said houses) in order to emulate some kind of Way You’re Supposed to Do It.

There’s a prescribed, easy on-board ramp into what society and capitalism wants from you. You do what your mommy and daddy did. Wouldn’t you know it? It involves spending more and more money, trying to keep up with or outdo everyone else. In the most boring, saccharine, performative thing you’ve been taught your whole life.

It’s much better to plant yourself at the base of that tree and start cutting. Offer your mind things that terrify you. Cut away at the wick of the tree. Take way too many drugs! Get drunk and wake up the next day, and not remember how you got that scrape on your knee or that scar on your chest! Drag your steel over that vein, and be thankful. I fucked up, I don’t remember why! Nobody’s mad at me!

I think the best version of me is the one where I keep it all in mind. Each person is equal. Each person comes here in the same way. This is not dumb metaphysical bullshit. Each person enters the world small and afraid and knowing nothing. Each person dies. The interim is immensely defined by time and space and the color and shape of the things they have no control over.

My religion is that. Of mutual respect for those of us tempest-tossed in this place. Of knowing that all that is happening comes from the same place and all goes to the same place. To assume primacy over another is to sin, and to perform kindness is what brings you closer to Heaven. Heaven is dying without fear.

Heaven is dying without fear.

And if you know any jetpack and/or white dreadlock guys, please let me know.