Humbled

They say you should never forget where you came from...but perhaps that the problem with some of us, we forget where we came from. It’s a struggle to make it out of the gutter and easy to find your way back... In fact the only thing easier is forgetting what the gutter is like when you claw your way out of it. Its too easy to forget how hard it is to fall asleep with a growling stomach because you needed to make sure your people ate. It’s easy to forget how hard it is to finesse your way away from your people while they eat so they don’t notice that you are not eating...again. It’s easy to forget all the children who have no gifts for Christmas while you are overloading your cart with things for your children. Children you know don’t need all of the frivolous bullshit they have asked you for throughout the year, and moreover won't appreciate it after they get it. It is easy to justify to yourself why you overlooked the man asking for change outside the store because you have "other responsibilities" you need to resolve, or because "you can barely keep your own head above water." It’s easy not to look at the woman with her kids flying a sign in the median of a freeway because you know you can’t help her situation. Easy to forget that sometimes all it takes is a nod of acknowledgement, a word of encouragement, because sometimes you just need to know other people know you exist, and that you matter.

I hate to use the phrase "its funny how" when I refer to the ease of which these things are forgotten. Ironically, in a very dark way, it is funny. It’s funny how fickle humans can be. During the times long forgotten of Gods and monsters, Greek and Egyptian Gods and demigods used to create times of discomfort on purpose, so as not to forget those things, so as not to become complacent in the comfortability we humans tend to cultivate for ourselves. For example, humans tend to need companionship even if only in jest in order to feel some sort of fulfillment. We tend to see being alone as a negative in life. We don't want to be alone with our own thoughts, and even more detrimental, our own feelings. We will use people as a mere distraction in order to avoid that which we should be embracing the most-discomfort. Imagine for yourself what it would be like to be in complete solitude for a week. Is that too much to wrap your head around? Alone with only your thoughts and only your feelings to process, to marinate in for an entire 24 hours and 7 complete days. . Would you go mad? Can you fathom that for just a day? Most of us would find ourselves calling anyone in our call list just to hear the sound of someone’s voice, to be distracted from our own bullshit... to deflect from the toxicity we bring to the people around us, the traumas we suffered but never resolved and to avoid tending wounds never healed. We would chose to do that even if it meant being in the company of someone that we find as pleasant as a root canal done with a fork. Most people would. For most of us that discomfort is less debilitating than that of being alone and feeling feelings and thinking thoughts that inevitably lead to more feelings that for most of us, we have no idea what to do with. Ah! But we do... we can drink them down, shovel food over them, decide to see what Amazon has on sale for the sixth time this week, run them away on the treadmill, fuck them out of our brain with the dude or chick next door we aren’t even attracted to much less like. Should we? Of course we should! Because as we all know, whatever we do, we must never, ever find ourselves content with discomfort above a level we feel we are emotionally prepared for...why that might lead to a breakthrough or a spiritual awakening of some sort. Neither of which are fun or entertaining in any sense of the fucking word. Not. One. Bit. So that would be crazy talk.

This leads me back to my original point (sorry it took so long) Why do we only commiserate with others when we walk down that road with them? Dirty hand in dirty hand, cold shoulder to literal cold shoulder, a chorus of empty stomachs do the growls make. Should one of us find an opportunity to go a different path; when the one hand is washed, the shoulders warmed and the stomach no longer part of the choir, we forget the song of sorrow we once sang with our fellow man. I am not an exception, and find myself asking this more of myself than anyone else.

Why?