this is the thing: dont think of anything as a risk. when you look back twenty years from now, thats not how youre going to think about your life. think of it more as i dunno, building the path. however it turns out is okay; its how its going to turn out. things happen the way they happen, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. i guess thats kind of a nihilistic view on life, because im essentially saying that it doesnt matter what choices you make but thats kind of the way i see it, just that i dont think of it in a bad way.
theres a symbol in mathematics called the integral. youve probably seen it; sort of a wavy line. it indicates an equation where you find the volume of a curve by taking a certain number of slices and adding them up to get the total, and that equals the entire piece. thats how i look at life: everybody is the sum of everything thats ever happened to them and everything that will happen to them. you cant throw out the bad parts because theyre bad, just like you wouldnt throw out the good parts because theyre good. were everything weve ever done or thought or dreamed good and bad. and thats the way it has to be. so i dunno, thats sort of a liberating idea to me because it means that even if i fuck something up beyond all recognition, its still a part of who i am and what i can identify with and grow from. if that makes any sense at all.
or, to put it another way (and steal a phrase from stephen king): everythings eventual. sooner or later (probably later), everything will happen. every possibility will be played out by some person at some point in time. so, in the larger scheme of things, why does it matter if youre the person that left home at sixteen to go work in a coal mine and eventually die of lung cancer? or why does it matter, on a scale that large, if youre the twenty-seven year old loser who moved two thousand miles away from his family because he thought he was in love but found out that he didnt really know what he was getting himself into? everything that can happen is going to happen the only question is who plays which role. your role (yes, were mixing stephen king and shakespeare metaphors here - fuck off) may be a shitty one-liner that nobody remembers ten minutes from now, but god-fucking-dammit its your role and youre going to give that one-liner all youve fucking got.
bear in mind that this isnt an argument for or against fate (personally, i dont buy into the idea of fate). im just trying to say that there isnt any one right or wrong way to live your life, because eventually everything will get played out in one iteration or another.
theres a symbol in mathematics called the integral. youve probably seen it; sort of a wavy line. it indicates an equation where you find the volume of a curve by taking a certain number of slices and adding them up to get the total, and that equals the entire piece. thats how i look at life: everybody is the sum of everything thats ever happened to them and everything that will happen to them. you cant throw out the bad parts because theyre bad, just like you wouldnt throw out the good parts because theyre good. were everything weve ever done or thought or dreamed good and bad. and thats the way it has to be. so i dunno, thats sort of a liberating idea to me because it means that even if i fuck something up beyond all recognition, its still a part of who i am and what i can identify with and grow from. if that makes any sense at all.
or, to put it another way (and steal a phrase from stephen king): everythings eventual. sooner or later (probably later), everything will happen. every possibility will be played out by some person at some point in time. so, in the larger scheme of things, why does it matter if youre the person that left home at sixteen to go work in a coal mine and eventually die of lung cancer? or why does it matter, on a scale that large, if youre the twenty-seven year old loser who moved two thousand miles away from his family because he thought he was in love but found out that he didnt really know what he was getting himself into? everything that can happen is going to happen the only question is who plays which role. your role (yes, were mixing stephen king and shakespeare metaphors here - fuck off) may be a shitty one-liner that nobody remembers ten minutes from now, but god-fucking-dammit its your role and youre going to give that one-liner all youve fucking got.
bear in mind that this isnt an argument for or against fate (personally, i dont buy into the idea of fate). im just trying to say that there isnt any one right or wrong way to live your life, because eventually everything will get played out in one iteration or another.
I hope you're doing well, sir.