Sunday

What kinds of thoughts permeate your mind when you go to sleep at night?
Do you ever remember any of your dreams - or nightmares?
When you wake up in the morning, what thoughts greet - or terrify - your mind?
Do you live life to it's fullest every single day?
Are there days when you just "let is slide"?
What is your outlook on life? Is it mostly postiive and energetic...
or is it mostly the opposite - full of dread and fear, negativity in it's purest and yet most raw form.
Do you think about your mortality - ever?
Maybe once a day? A week? A month? Never?
Does life seem to you at some points that it will never end and at other points it's done today?

I was exposed to so much death in my teen years - my friends being killed or dying in so many ways: Murder; suicide; deadly illness; car accidents that it really effected the way I look at life. I couldn't really say today an exact number - it was at least 15 people I knew either personally as a close friend, maybe as a friend - not-so-close but we partied together - or a person that hung out in our crowd that I really didn't know (it was a HUGE crowd of people in the different arenas I hung out in, which was fully 3 of them).

I tend to think about any number of the items I listed above on a daily basis - maybe all of them at times. It isn't sordid, it isn't fatalistic, I've seen reality and the reality is, we all die. You can no more bypass that fact than you can that you were, on one day long ago - born into this life and onto this earth. You may not like how life is going right now - but - we all go through that.

I have been through so much adversity in my life that when I see it arise, I start wondering what message is trying to be communicated to me through the event or events that are going on.

I know, you've seen death too. I have never met anyone that has seen as much as I have in my teen years. Never. Those that are still alive are dying off like flies. They aren't very old. Sometimes I start to wonder when the call will come to my doorstep. It's a sobering thought, really.

The reason I fear it is because I would like to be around for my son for a little while. Dying young - or younger - is hardly my idea of a fulfilling life it if means your offspring growing up without you being around. It is played over and over again every day in real life, but I don't accept that it MUST be my fate.

I did bad things in my teens. I hung around bad people. One crowd was a bunch of bikers - with guns - with attitudes. They were REAL bad-@$$es, I'm not going to deny it. Will it catch up to me in the form of an early demise someday? I can't answer that question, only God can do that. He's the Judge and His word is final. I have tried to live the life I thought He wanted me to live - but I have had so many short-comings and failings, things that have permeated my life since I was a kid and that I have never been able to shake. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see a gross, pathetic, foul and vile human being in the image.

But - I don't hate myself. We all have these little "demons" in our lives that we have to deal with. How we deal with it? I don't want to know, because that is usually a very personal and intimate thing. It may not be dealt with. It might be that we have stuff that we will never be able to shed. This thing calledl life is a rough road. There are lots of potholes and sometimes we find they are giant crevass's that need a crane truck to pull you out of and get you back on your merry way.

I have gone through the myriad of these thoughts today. I think about all of those people, most of them are dead. This isn't one or 2 people, or a dozen, or dozens, this is hundreds of people. I think of the mind diversions I can do to not think about it and make it go away. We all do that. I've never met a person that I got to know that didn't have something from the past that is haunting them.

The only conclusion I can come to is that I am striving in my life to "love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul and stregth" - because, in the end, I have concluded, there is nothing else. There is family, there are friends, there are a lot of things, but - the source of life is the Lord. I cling to that as I have nothing else - been there, done that, bought the farm.
ben