I've Never Gone Without

I’ve been up since 5:30, sitting on my bed, reading my news app. The ringing in my ears from the tinnitus is loud, not as loud as it has been in the past, but loud. For 3 months every day it’s been whistling in my ear, ranging pitches, sometimes waking me from my sleep. I still count my blessings, all my aliments thus far are not life threatening, just a bit annoying.

They say a positive outlook is essential to a long life and true happiness, this I will work towards. Not sure why at times though, a long life seems like a good idea, but yet life is painful and unstable. I’m sure being on the other end the view is much different, knowing your time is short you’ll most likely want to live forever. Like if this tinnitus doesn’t clear up and slowly moves into losing my hearing, I’ll want to listen to the voices of the ones I love and try to memorize their sound.

I think of my parent’s voices, my daughters voice, my ex-wife’s, my sisters and so on – all the voices that have been with me for eons it seems. I can her them in my mind, but not quite hear them. Like it’s not a recording of their voices playing, but like they are ruminating off a sheet of paper. Losing your hearing is not the worst of things either. Losing a leg or a lung or an eye, painful and annoying, but you are still alive.

But would it be worth it? To still be alive after such loses. To lose both legs, to go blind, to go deaf, would you still want to live? Would your life be cherished more or less? Would it be, ‘this is what I no longer have’ or ‘I am grateful to still have a life’? I would like to think I would be the one with gratitude, but I would not know until in that position. I feel some of the strongest people I could ever see are those who persevere. You can train your way into running 100 miles, but you can’t train your way into overcoming adversity.

I feel the world doesn’t spend enough time contemplating this, analyzing their life and what it would look like with loss. What their death will look like and when it will happen. Sadly, we need to be shocked into gratitude and positivity at times, most times it seems. For those who have not encountered their demise on some level, it’s not easy to see the world and their life as a gift. My daughter has never gone without, encounter very few painful experiences (aside from a broken heart), she has been very fortunate in this life. My losses, my troubling times have been small in comparison to others. The mountains I have climbed been that of molehills, I have been fortunate in this lifetime. My friend who is sick and is likely to succumb from this sickness is fortunate to know time is short and can live as best they can till the end; my friend too is very fortunate in this lifetime.

It’s all in how we want to view the world and feel the effects, being grateful and positive is a choice, no matter how bad we think we might have it. I mean could you imagine that if you were to die tonight and you knew, how much different would have lived your life today? I sit here in the back of my van, my little, tiny twinkle lights on, wrapped in the quilt my mother sewed for me when I was in my teens. I sit here happy, with a peace in my heart and semi-loud whistling in my ears. A helicopter circling above, the cold of the rising sun starting to penetrate the walls of my van a little more. My coffee low, body sore, day looking to be long finding things to do in my hometown till I can see my daughter at her work later this afternoon.

I could live in this moment forever and be the happiest I have ever been. I could go into the dealings of my life and there are some dealings, but none of them matter at this moment. At this moment I am free of them all, even the ringing in my ears.

Every moment of every day can be like this if I choose it to be. My knowledge of life is that it’s short and painful and cumbersome and lonely, my wisdom of life is that it’s short and painful and cumbersome and lonely. But knowing this inside and out gives me what I need to choose my line of sight. This reality gives me the opportunity to have pleasures in the smallest of things, gratitude in the face of adversity, love and compassion for all who cross my path.

We are all suffering the same fate, spiritual beings having a human experience, and not all of us know there is a way out of this experience without having to die. I must have compassion for those people, the ones who do not understand humanities predicament. Compassion for the angry, the resentful, the mean, the selfish, even compassion for all those that I think trespass against me. It’s not an easy state of mind to stay in, but it lends its way to a brightness, to a true happiness within.