This past weekend I traveled to Chicago from Nashville. BNA to Midway, Midway to BNA. Airports have a funny way of compressing experiences into arrivals and departures. And something about the time-space distortion created by plane travel (not claiming to use “time-space” in the proper way or anything) makes me feel like the plane doesn’t really go anywhere, but instead that I just walk into this crowded little room, and when I come out, I’m in another city (especially when I don’t have a window seat).

I noticed on this last trip that flying causes me somewhat more anxiety than in the past, and I think I know why. It has something to do with the expectations I’ve developed for my life over the past few years, and the awareness that I have a long way to go before many of them are realized. And when my analytical mechanisms begin to calculate the odds of surviving a 500 mph collision with the ground from 30,000 feet while encapsulated in what is essentially a large tank of fuel, I sadly face the fact that if the engines fail, I have to live (figuratively) with what I did (or didn’t do) and who I was (or wasn’t).

It’s really not about how good my life has been- it’s been great, don’t get me wrong. I’m more fortunate as a human being than the majority of the world’s population (dead and alive). Great family, great friends, amazing spouse, quality education, comfort, love, a taste of luxury now and then, enough money, enough food, a good sense of self confidence and everything in between. I would describe my life as full, even at the meager age of 27. But as I’ve grown as a person, as new knowledge has shaped my mind and as my eyes have opened just a little bit wider with every new and formative experience, I have learned to hold myself to a standard that values not so much the pleasure of existence, but the fulfillment of individual potential. And when I think of my true (as opposed to my actualized) potential, there’s a gap there, and I feel regret that I haven’t done more to close it. Especially during turbulence.

That, I suppose, is the good thing about mortality-reminders: they are conducive to introspection. Of course, in the predictable human way, I often forget those feelings of urgency and fall back into a comfortable routine of not growing, not developing, not moving forward- but of idling, satisfied just to be where I am, entertaining myself with distractions, rationalizing as needed. This is not an easy condition to remedy (given that flying is so expensive). It takes vigilance, discipline, and enthusiasm not natural to my composition for me to maximize my potential and to live to the fullest of my abilities. It’s a difficult thing to do (a sure sign of worth), and I suspect I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to break through the glass ceiling of “myself.”

But as the great and imaginary Tyler Durden once said, “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” Fight Club always does the trick.

“Ah! The clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.”

-Robert Service

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Life, as I know it, in the totality of existence or “grand scheme” sense of the term, is often difficult for me to reconcile. Not that life is supposed to be reconciled, or fair, or just, or anything but what it is really. Yet there’s some sense of should be and shouldn’t be that lurks behind my perceptions, silently valuing and judging and rebelling against the happenings of the world, though always careful not to rub elbows with my belief that justice is nothing more than a wish on a wish list (rather than an innate right to which we are all entitled), so as not to disturb the delicate balance of cognitive dissonance that I maintain.

E.g: children with cancer, dog clothes, the fate of the American Indians, huge masses of trash in the ocean, promotions that went to cheaters, your fiancé being struck by lightning right before you propose, whoever it was that knocked off the mirror of our car in the parking garage and didn’t have the decency to leave a note, the fact that the bachelor is so popular, and finally the old vegetable of a man, rotting in the dilapidated nursing home to the tune of daytime television, with black and white pictures on the wall from the time when he served on the USS McCormick in the last great war.

Reconciling: trying to make sense of it all- or in other words, looking for reasons (no blog-plug intended). Must there be a reason? I think we'd like there to be. I think many people are attached to the idea that life's significant events are not random, but part of something which makes them purposeful, or rather the culmination of life: meant to be. The implication of course is the logical conclusion: reason requires purpose, purpose requires intent, and intent is the perrogative of beings. Destiny, fate, serendipity, karma, providence- they all mean one thing: something is out there, looking out for us, and it has a plan. Life is not the product of the coincidental collision of astroids, it is the realization of ____'s will (insert preferred name for supernatural being of choice).

Or...the casualties of the 2004 tsunami (numbering around 230,000) were not all "chosen" to die just then, the mass production of IED's in Pakistan that make their way to Afghanistan and send our soldier's home in boxes is not for a good reason (Westboro Baptist members, don't answer that), and you failing your 10th grade chemistry test was not part of God's plan. So then why did and do these things happen? How can we accept the cold randomness of the universe and just go on our merry way?

The solution, I think, is to compartmentalize randomness to it's apporiate realm, and explain the rest of life with what we know. We cannot discount the effect of human conduct, of human life. How many events or occurences are there that are truly free from human influence? Is the cancer in a child always a chance mutation? Are natural disasters as "natural" as described? Is the old man in the nursing home where he is because his entire family was accidentally eradicated by a tractor-trailer crash, or is his placement the reality of human compromise?

So maybe too many paragraphs ending in question marks. The point I'm making, if I asked myself, is that we want the reassurance of reasons, but we too often look for them in the wrong places (sometimes because we don't know any better, and sometimes deliberately). I'm not saying the skies are empty, but rather that we are predisposed to accept predetermination, and inconsistent in doing so. The promising med-school student is run over while riding his bike to class, and the homeless person is starving; one is the will of God, the other is the consequence of poor judgment. Our explinations for the world usually suit our sensibilities.

"Men love to believe that God breaks the natural order of events for them."

-Spinoza.

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