I showered today, I carpooled with my wife to work, drank coffee, ate lunch, and realized that I forgot something for filing my taxes. I felt love, I felt nervous for the future, I got frustrated, I was happy. Another dreaded Monday is coming to the end as I sit on the couch, clicking away at the computer.
So much about life is mundane. We are made up of these many mundane moments mixing together. Life seems to pass quickly these days. The sidekick wife and I have started our birthing classes and every time the weekend arrives it feel like it was just here. The future of a lovely little baby boy abusing reusable diapers in Castle Black feels far away, but I suspect it may arrive swiftly like Lancelot in a Monty Python movie.
These days we want to nest but can't because we're fixing up the basement to expand our 830 sq ft grandma home. The construction could start in as little as a few weeks or approximately as long as who the hell knows? The bank just asked for even more documentation of income and such last week (even though we're already approved)... and we aren't allowed to start some of the pre-construction work until we get permission from them. This uncertainty of timing is frustrating and inconvenient but it's all part of living... and not much of a complaint.
I, we, are excited for the future on a fundamental, base level. We've been married for ten years and are finally getting around to having the children that we thought we'd have eight years ago... before we found too many reasons to continue not trying... before we were reminded of the lack of control we have over things. I never thought I'd be 30 and childless, but after everything... this year feels like a gift, like a mercy, like a true joy.
I consider the qualities I want my child to possess... what hopes I have for his future life. I smile at the knowledge of his loving, sweet mother's guidance. This will be a home of peace, of love, of shelter. This will be an attempt at demonstrating how to properly interact with the world.... how to get by without giving up that which is most important... how to worship God, not self, in every act... how to be the person we all wished we'd become when we were too young to know better... to know worse.
I fear this world. I fear the effect it has on me... on my inner self. I often wonder if living a good life in every single seemingly interminable act is somewhat harder than choosing to give up your life for God in a single act. I feel confident that I could make the latter choice... and I daily fail at the former.
This world is full of joy. It's overflowing with happiness. There's more good in the world than could ever be consumed, experienced, and described... but there's also sadness. It's like a dirty sheen that covers everything. It's an oil spill in a crystal-clear ocean and we're suck trying to live in the midst of it, praying to stay clean.
Today I made it through another day. Someone else didn't. Another day went by. For me. For someone else the day ended early. It wasn't cancer. It wasn't a heart attack. It wasn't a tornado or an earthquake. It wasn't the rainbow variety of changes and chances this world offers. It was none of those things, though they happen.
Today a once smiling child with a happy heart and love in their eyes woke up... older... twisted... deformed by the world and self. Today a father lost a child... not because of any good reason... just because. Because someone else decided they should.
This is no rare act. It's a daily reality in some places. On the newscast when it happens to generic others... it's almost like background noise. We've grown accustomed to that suffering, but not when it happens at home. This one has emotion...feeling... and it isn't pleasant.
This bombing at the Boston Marathon is perspective. It is a wake up call. This type of death is tragic. It is unacceptable. It is many things and none good... and the lives lost shouldn't hurt and anger me more just because they mirrored my own. God doesn't value an American more... but somewhere subconsciously I do.
I need to re-awaken to the reality of the equality of mankind. I once left the US because I felt it was fine and well to wax intellectual about equality if I was always comfortable and surrounded by familiar things... but it was another thing to go somewhere different to live the reality of "different isn't worse." Mankind is beautiful and full in diversity. I'm realizing that this semblance of indifference to suffering around the world is the same superiority malaise from a different angle.
It's an interesting juxtaposition... my eagerness to bring another soul into this world... a world of too-oft sadness. I think of parents who loved their children before birth, who dreamed of them before even the act of conception and who had the hopes of a full and vibrant life... like I do... and I can't imagine the burning grief and sorrow they feel today... a sorrow someone else wanted them to feel, just because.
This world civilization we have collectively grown is not sustainable. It simply isn't.
I refuse to be satisfied just because another day went by. For me.
