I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I couldn’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was never actu­ally put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ently if I ever came fright­en­ingly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mystery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­ated by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­eral who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recently dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­ated and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­sity. After uni­ver­sity, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­prises. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been given, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­denly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would darken into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dissatisfaction.

I pre­sented this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should never live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to truly live this way, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to worry in the day­time and too sleepy to worry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to survive.

And I can only hope to never reach them.

The Awakening Series

1. Introduction
2. Cause
3. The Reborn Dreamer