Insomnia

Once again, I can't fall asleep.

My mind gets to reeling about all kinds of things, such as why life's events play out the way they do, and the result is an inability to simply put my head on the pillow and drift off.

My mother passed away one year ago this month, on the 20th. What does anyone do with that? I still don't understand it. It happens every day, all around the world. It's happened since life first existed, and it will go on happening, regardless of technological promises of immortality.

I wish I could talk to her again. I wish she could have seen me get married last April. If my wife and I are fortunate enough to have children, I wish my mother could have held them. I know she would have experienced overwhelming joy from that simple act.

What does anyone do with this kind of thing? Death makes all the rest of our concerns seem so petty and unworthy of worry. There's no way to bring her back, no way to completely console my father, who is still struggling with his heartbreaking loss.

When I was younger, I had some grandiose plans for my future. I was certain my destiny included fame and fortune. The adolescent dreams many kids entertain for their teen years and perhaps some twenties, I held dear for much longer. It took a strange odyssey across America during the last ten years for me to completely let go of those childish aspirations. In the process I met a woman I had given up hope of ever finding.

So I guess life is much like that. No matter how confident we are, or how we try to set up our lives in the way we feel most content, there is the element of fortune, both good and bad. It's a parameter many dismiss, but none escape. Most people would like to imagine they have the power to make all their own decisions, but when you trim it down to the most fundamental aspects of existence, that perception of personal power is nothing but illusion.

Once more, I ask, what do you do with that?

There are a great many individuals living in the world today who would love nothing more than to tear the hope of God or things spiritual away from those who "cling" to them.

To them I say: keep your cynical proclamations for your own tortured ruminations. Leave the rest of us alone to our "childish delusions." At least the hope we cherish does not rely on the limitless treachery of human self-conceit for validation.