The Free Lunch Is Not Free

dedicated to @JeremyCrow4Life who got me to really think about these things at a time when I didn't want to.

     My cousin has my life and I consequently must have someone else's life although I don't know whose life this is.  After several false starts, I defected from my chosen career-- an action that was necessary to my well-being but that I view with strong regret nonetheless.  My final career [to date; I am planning a return to something else in the near future] was prematurely cut short by a serious accident and I am quite lucky to be alive.  Cousin chose the same career that I did and is getting on swimmingly.  I've got one marriage and no human children.  Cousin has had two marriages-- one at a time-- and some children from one of those.  I live in a small house in the middle of nowhere with a shedding dog and some other animals and some fixing that I continually have to do whether I want to or not.  Cousin lives in a stylish condo in a stylish city with a stylish does that does not shed-- and maintenance and fixing is part of the monthly fees.  I have tussles and at times outright wars with my weight on an on-going basis.  Cousin is slender and athletic.  How did my cousin get my life?  I don't know.  [Maybe I do know].  How did I get someone else's life?  I don't know.  [This is my life].  Damn this reality stuff.

     I would have liked to be a ginger.  I think red hair is sexy.  I wish I had the green eyes that only two percent of the human population has.  I want curly hair but instead mine is naturally limp.  My hair is disappointing.  Instead of fussing with dyes and perms, I grow my hair out for the little kids with cancer.  Since I don't appreciate my hair, I donate it to an organization that can use it to give someone something that they will treasure for a time.  I don't like sticking stuff like contacts into my eyes so I deal with my eyes the way they are.  My vision did not make it out of the accident unscathed.  In spite of good enough visual acuity, my eyeballs are engaged in a continuous riot against playing nicely with each other or with the brain.  I've gotten used to the photo-phobia, the permanent double vision in one eye, the ocular-motor dysfunction, the perception problems, and the feeling that my eyes are on some kind of acid trip without any L.S.D.

     [I will skip over the internal whining dialogue as that stuff isn't of interest even to me. . .and pick up where my thoughts are more rational and also are leading to productive action]. 

     We are not all "born equal" nor do we have "equal access" or "equal opportunity" through out our lives.  Some babies are born sickly.  Others are born with obvious mental defects.  Some are born blind or deaf or with other sensory issues.  Others are born with senses intact.  Some are born into addiction.  Others are born into average families and circumstance.  The toddler who is immediately sucked up by the System and stuck into the Special Education mode may find reduced expectations and experiences.  The child in an overcrowded school where violence in the hallways and the classroom is a daily occurrence runs a definite risk of a substandard education.  The child whose relations-- like their past generations of relations-- are dependent upon the State [welfare, disability, social services...] may have to make his or her own way in the world in order to break the trend of not working.  The teen who yields to drug addiction [including the drug alcohol] will live to regret what might have been unless the addiction takes him or her first.  The adult, like me, who has had a major interruption in his or her life, has to work hard to get away from certain "helping" professionals-- whose goals are merely to fill a quota-- and then persevere in order to achieve his or her own challenging goals.  As adults, if we choose to do so, we get to grapple with the reality that there is no equality among fetuses, babies, children, and adults.  We can blame our finances, society, political systems, disabilities and abilities, and emotional states for our troubles.  Or, we can wage war against that within ourselves that we use as excuses and barriers which "hold us back."  If we want something different, we have to do something different.  The System's price for hand-outs is an impoverished life.

     I am at a juncture and I am excited to be here right now.  I know what I know and I know what I don't know.  My laziness and my fear no longer get to dictate my actions or non-actions.  Some of my circumstances I cannot change.  I cannot rewrite my past.  The accident does not disappear because I want it to.  I would have been far better off had the stoned driver rammed someone else's car into a house rather than mine.  The actions that I took-- in-between thinking "This is it.  I'm dead"-- in response to someone else's actions that I had no control over saved my life.  My experiences to date do not yield to the subjective reality of the New Agers that has infiltrated popular culture.  I don't do wishy-washy.  Yes, in my younger days I wanted to believe that we "choose" everything that happens to us.  Yes, I wanted to believe that there is a "reason" for everything.  I know now that I ascribe meaning to my life.  Some things happen that are truly beyond my control.  I make other things happen.  Dad used to tell me that if something is worth having, it is worth working for.  I had a chemistry prof whose favorite saying was "Go for the gusto."  What I do next with this life is up to me.
      
sapphoq on life