The Second Hand Man

I realize now that life is like traveling on a ship or train by night. We move from harbor to harbor or from station to station. We exist between a series of climaxes and/or mostly anticlimaxes. The unknown is what makes life exciting.

What really makes life bearable is the expectation, good or bad, of things to come.

Good things to look forward to would be – summer vacation, graduation, a kiss from a pretty girl, marriage, a happy family life, children, a successful career, a trip abroad, an important football game, riches, fame and so on.

Bad things, or the things we abhor or fear – exams, failure, war, ill health, bankruptcy and, of course the ultimate downer, death.

Good or bad, either way, they are the events that impress enough upon our minds to form a distinct memory – something we are able to recall many years from when they occurred.

We don’t remember our life in absolute detail.

Take high school for example. I spent five years in high school. That’s over a thousand days of schooling, not counting vacations and weekends. Yet I can only remember certain short details of say some fifty days. Why is that? Simply because most of a person’s life is repetition. It is mundane, pedantic, and frequently banal. It is simply existence. This existence is like that ship or train that transports us from one harbor or station to the next. It is existence that carries us from one memorable moment to the next.

Yep, life eventually becomes a schlep of constantly looking forward to the next weekend. And normally when it gets here, the forecast is rain!

I remember once hearing a saying that went, ‘Life is a journey, not a destination!’

Unfortunately, most of the passengers gotta travel coach in order to accommodate the lucky few in first class.

It don’t matter if you yellow, white, red or black, in the bus of life you ride in the back!

Too afraid to do anything that could drastically change the future, I must continue with this humdrum existence of mine. So, now while the rest of the world lives in wonder of tomorrow, I am forced to live my life knowing the future, but unable to share my knowledge with a single living soul.