Even If Being Free Means Being Alone…

I remember visiting my hometown several years ago.  But before we left to return to our (other/new) home, my wife and I stopped by cousin, Bill George’s house on Durland Avenue.  He wasn’t home.  But I have another cousin, David Ritter, just across that street, so I walked over and leaned forward to knock at that door.

I saw David inside, sitting at his kitchen table, and he seemed small, as if pathetic and sad/empty in a way, yet somehow also serene, sanguine, perhaps even resilient—at peace--in himself.  It was my knock that broke the serenity, then, so we could otherwise “catch up.”

My point here is:  That day I saw David, maybe for the first time ever.  And I realize now that maybe it was the first human I had ever truly seen that wasn’t in the (active) midst of “reinventing” him/herself, not aggressively pursuing its ideal mate, job, car, sexual position or lottery ticket…  That day I saw a living human being, if only for one instant, unencumbered by its desire and this rotten, failed culture that exploits desire to make us soul-less cattle/worker/consumer robots for the benefit of other/all soul-less, sub-human capitalists with no honest, moral right to exist in our typical, selfish, endlessly destructive way.

And now, finally, I too have stopped “reinventing” myself (I hope).  And yes, I’m still sick enough and mean enough to want and to have, only now I know the difference between psychiatric (culture induced) pathology and reality.

So my advice is: Don’t wait as long as me to abandon fake images etched inside your head like it was the walls in Plato’s Cave.  Don’t wait to know your true, living self.   Even if, for example, your contempt for all of the other lost and losing people is so great that not one could possibly, ever love you.  Because even if being free means being alone, it’s worth it!