A couple of interesting things that went through my mind and / or happened to me as a kid : one, I used to think that 75 years was the ideal age for one to die - meaning that by then, I thought, someone would have enjoyed life to its fullest and was at the right age to leave this all behind. I stuck to this reasoning for a number of years - well into my teens - and I even decided that if I wasn't dead when I was 75, then I'd kill myself. Of course, we change, we grow up, we learn, and what we thought when we were kids stops making much sense. I now look at 75 years in this life as so very little time - and yes, as my old pal Rudy once famously wrote : 'If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run', then for sure you can make the most of whatever time you're allotted. Sometimes you get much less than 75 years, sometimes you get more, and how you choose to live your life is ultimately down to you. You allow or don't allow the hurdles you face to bring you down. Which sort of brings me to the next point.
When I was fairly young, I tested highly on an IQ test - so much so that I was considered 'gifted' and for a while there was talks of me going to a 'special' school. Shit, I never thought myself as such, it was just that my young mind had a stupid ability to retain loads of stuff. I'd read something, remember the gist of it, not necessarily understand it, then it would be stored somewhere deep in my mind waiting for the moment it proved to be useful. When I was in my eighth grade, a teacher I had gave us all a list with a bunch of words for us to find out what they meant - I looked at the list and there wasn't a single word whose meaning I didn't know. This was meant as homework, so I just skipped it. The next time we had class he went through the list and asked people for the definition of the word. When it came to my turn, I said I didn't do the homework - I didn't need to, seeing as I knew all the words. The guy looked me square in the eye, then looked at his list of remaining words, and asked what 'Superego' was.
How easy was that? Together with the ID and the ego, it's one of the three components of the human psyche. And how did I know this? It was in an episode of The Simpsons. Again, I was just the kind of guy whose mind retained useless information. Or mostly useless, anyway. After that class, my teacher asked me to stay behind, and again he came with that 'gifted' spiel. I wasn't, I told him, not in any way, shape or form. He and him never really got along after that - maybe he saw something in me and had failed to fan those embers into a flame?
I was never, ever special. And, by the same token, having lived my life the way I have, having made the choices I made, I'm not ashamed of myself either. Do I have regrets? Goddamn right I do, there are a lot of things I wish I've never done. Not because they were detrimental to me, but rather because they were detrimental to others. I regret much more those things than everything I never did - and know I could have done. Even now, if I so chose it, I could do different, edifying things with my life. I just choose not to, at least not at the present moment, and nor in the near future.
There's the feeling that I could have fallen in line anytime I wanted, that I could have chosen contentment. That I could have played the game, and if I look back, there would have been at least a dozen contenders for that chance. I wouldn't ever have been happy that way, and worse still, neither would have anyone. All them living souls are far happier now, and thank the baby fucking jesus for that. I chose a path years ago, from which steering away from is neither easy nor advisable. And that, in and of itself, does not make me unique - I'm just another ship in the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment