Just When...
Just when you think all the doors are closed.
Just when you think life has unloaded its supply of lemons on you.
Just when you think it couldn’t get worse.
Just when you think fate has dealt you all the wrong cards.
Just when you think there is no hope for the world.
Just when you think life has been impartially unfair to you.
Just when nothing more could go wrong.
Just when you are beginning to lose faith in everything – you, your fate, your destiny, your family, your friends, the people around you, the world – there comes a moment.
A jiffy of existence that manages to turn everything upside down.
Lose hope. Gain hope. Despair. Repair. Suspicion. Trust. Believe. Criticize. Ridicule. Support. Agree. Disagree. Confusion. Clarity. Perspective. The bigger picture. Understanding. Misunderstanding. Error. Correction. Sinister. Simple. Diabolical. Divine. Ring out the old. Ring in the new.
A year ends. A year beckons.
People live. People die. People are reborn. Or are they?
Perspectives change. We lose the old one, gain a new one. Change the perspective to suit you, or change yourself to suit the perspective. Or get a totally new one.
When one loses hope, someone else gains it. Does hope also follow a law of conservation? What was it that someone said, “Hope is eternal,” right?
Do we have free will? If we have free-will, is there destiny?
Does fate deal a raw hand to everyone, now and then? Are people entitled to large or smaller shares? Is it based on a system of points decided by karma? Or is it random? What is random? How can we be sure the Universe is not plotting the course of events?
Perfectly normal paranoia, as Slartibartfast/Zaphod would say.
If paranoia is abnormal, why does everyone have it? If everyone has it, why isn’t it normal? What is normal? Is it conscious or sub-conscious? Does consciousness stem from a series of synaptic impulses? Or does it go beyond that?
I don’t know what exactly I wanted to say. I just wanted to say something.
So I said it.
I hate to end it on this sour note. So I’ll just copy-paste this line from the movie Crash (2004)
“It’s the sense of touch.”
“What?”
“Any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”