I haven’t had time to breathe.
Yesterday I was driving down State Street with the sun in my face and the dry taste of traffic filling my head. The heat and the lazy carelessness that comes with it just slammed into my consciousness all at once. It is summer time again. Summer, with all the crazy beauty that comes with it; all the endless nights and insane half memories that linger on into the twisted mythology of our youth; it is here again.
For just a moment, I was crazy again. I longed for the rush of self destruction. I longed for the trembling empty feeling of doing something that I absolutely know will have awful consequences. I don’t know where this comes from. I had an urge to smash my success, to mindlessly destroy something I cherish, for no payoff but the thrill of doing it.
I don’t know what stopped me either. It is not my intellect, or my judgment. I had those things before, and they never stopped me. It wasn’t the fear of losing what I have worked so hard to gain, because in that brief moment, that thought was absolutely absent. I don’t know what stayed my hand. I just know that it is beyond me. It is above and greater than I am. I do know I am absolutely grateful for whatever force that allows me to hold on to the amazing things I have in my life. I know that I owe all my effort, and all my attention to whatever that thing is that allows me to go on living this amazing life that I live.
Sometimes I wish I could dissect these things. I wish I could understand and diagnose what makes my life work out the way it does. But at times like this, I realize that if I could understand it, it wouldn’t work. This grace is beyond my comprehension, and the fact that it is indefinable and transient is a fundamental part of what makes it work so well for a guy like me.
And another breath in, and another breath out.
