Ain’t that a bag of dicks?

I mean, nothing in particular, but it seems things have taken a general turn for the shit-show, lately. Y’know? One of those series of moments, going in slow motion – punctuated by hopeful moments – down into a sinal valley, where the darkness lives.

Nothing officially wrong with darkness, other than the fear of it. But, I mean, it’s been one of those weeks.

One of those periods of time where you make every wrong left-turn. Where the positive feedback loop of thinking seems to build; everyone’s angry, or stressed, or sick, or on vacation. And miraculously, everything seems to be synchronous for some monumental bullshit.

Honestly, I’m more or less ok with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong: shit sucks, right now. But if Musical Theater has taught me anything – other than that, for a white guy, I don’t suck at rapping (thanks hammy) – it’s that everything in life is temporary, and only For Now.

For your listening pleasure.

This song, for whatever reason, is obnoxiously important to me.  It isn’t for whatever reason, but bear with me for a second.

This song comes at the end…uh spoilers…and the main character – Princeton – has come to yet another dead-end in his quest for purpose (meta, weee). He again looks out of the Proscenium with a sense of having failed at life, because, again, he couldn’t find the one damn thing he had energy to find.

In the musical, his life also tends to be kind of a miserable downward spiral after leaving college to make a difference in the world. He finds out that people are largely indifferent to him, that jobs are hard to secure, and girls are hard to deal with. Just as he finally accomplishes something that he hopes will give his life some meaning…zilch.

So his friends, and fellow tenants let him know: it’s all a moment in time, and it will pass. So will the good times. So will the bad times.

I love this song because a.) it’s catchy as all hell (bum di-dum ta-da, bum di-dum ta-da, da-di da-di) b.) it’s sweet, and it’s honest: life sucks on a regular basis.

But for every moment where you find an unexpected bill, your cat goes splat, you get caught in gale force hurricane storms daily, even when it’s sunny right before you go walking outside, a car washes you in water, but you’re too wet to notice, you get home, trip, and wreck your shit, and then you end up too lonely to get out bed the next morning.

Phew, scuse me, just got a bit too heavy.

But for every shitty moment like that, there are those absurd peaks: everything goes right, Murphy is in the bathroom taking a shit, and his law means about as much. Then you smile, and life is OK.

And then it happens again, and every gradation.

That can be difficult. the U.S. in particular is such a culture of consequence: we’re building to some great glorious purpose. We’re building up and up and up and up; but up ceases to matter, at a certain point, and so many people do not care already.

So then you come down, and you realize that all you worked for starts corroding, and you go down again. And then the wrong turns sneak their way back, and the frustration mounts again, things get worse, and worse, and worse. And suddenly your back on the shitty prime day.

Then it passes again.

When you stop seeing the world as consequential – or necessarily purposeful – first, it blows a bag of dicks. That’s just a really fun curse, I love it. Dicks dicks dicks dicks bag of dicks.

Sorry.

But when you stop giving a sense of purpose, consequence, finality. When the end of the world stops arriving at your doorstep, even if it is literally right there. When you look at the smiles you have, and see them as a fleeting moment that will vanish; and so will the sore throats, and struggles and shitty days. The days where people bother you.

When you see it as a circle, instead of a line. A sine-wave instead of a mountain. Well, first you get kinda detached, and a little bit sad.

Then, you live it.

The great thing about purposelessness (Sorry Princeton, buddy), is that it doesn’t mean you have no purpose, it just means your purpose is without end. It stops being about the book you have to finish writing. It stops being about that one life-defining equation.

Because, guess what: if you ever accomplish an insane goal, and you don’t immediately die afterwards, something awful happens.

The next moment.

Building your life around a purpose is great. But purpose has an expiration date, if its a worthy one. And if it’s  not worthy, but it has no expiration, then it just perpetuates shitty awfulness, and that’s precisely bueno for fucking nobody. So fuck that shizzle.

I am not snoop dogg, apologies for that one.

I have a history of losing people who I care about…either through my own mystical levels of stupidity, or, more prosaic reasons. Each time it cuts deep, and leaves me raw.

It’s awful to feel so miserable…especially when the person feels vital. But the worst part is the part no one mentions: the day after, where you find out that that person leaving didn’t end the world. The part where no one cares, and you can get up and live, or sit and be miserable. It hurts ten times more because it shows you that you were wrong about how much they actually meant.

The world doesn’t give a shit that your life is a big bag of floppy penis. It doesn’t care about the glaciers, or animals, it doesn’t care about continental drift, or weather.

All the world gives about, is turning in one big-ass circle, on a slightly janky-tilt of about 23 degrees. That, and nothing more.

There’s wisdom in that, to me.