On Fragility

I've been in the midst of some mid-life crisis or awakening lately and it's  odd. I don't like it, but I'm trying to embrace it. Here's a stream of consciousness about our fleeting feelings and fragility of what matters most.

Fleeting Feelings

When I was in high school, I remember having so many emotions. I remember feeling so deeply, hurting so hard, having such high highs. It was certainly different. I remember playing hockey and wanting to snaps sticks in half if I let a goal through, feeling white hot rage. In December, my ball hockey team won every game all season and got a little shafted with some slippery conditions and BS. We lost in the playoffs and I felt robbed. Did I feel any white hot rage? Nope. I felt flat. I yearned to feel the rage, feel something, but I didn't. What the hell is that?

Catcher in the Rye & Sad Girl Fall

In high school, I was that doofus that loved most of the books we were "forced" to read in high school. One of my favourites of all-time was Catcher in the Rye. I still read this book almost every fall (just to make fall more depressing). I related to the narrator, Holden Caulfield and appreciated the concepts this poor phony was overthinking.

Now that I'm a parent, I'm rapidly realizing that children are full of magic. They have wonder, they have whimsy, they have unfiltered excitement. There's a reason they're so loud and it isn't to break our eardrums; it's because they feel at maximum volume. I want it, I love it. I love enabling their magic and witnessing it. It's absolutely the best part of being a parent.

It's also the worst part.

It's the worst part becauase I know they'll lose it. Someday they will become adults with no magic. They'll realize how terrifying, sad, depressing, and complicated the world is. It's tragic. It's depressing. I wish that I never had this realization.

We're Thin Thin Glass

I hold a somewhat military mindset. I think in black and white. I also think i'm bulletproof. I think I'm faster and stronger than I am. I approach getting sick with "mind over matter" and I win almost every time. I'm a realist, yet I also think myself and my family are untouchable.

Last week, we were rear-ended in my truck while driving the kids to school. Thankfully, that's exactly why I keep my obnoxiosu trailer hitch on the truck. We were fine, my truck was fine; my wife hugged the lady that drove into said trailer hitch.

After this happened, my wife told me about a distant friend of ours that was recently t-boned at a high speed with her young son in the car. My heart snapped. They're completely fine, but whoa. It hit me. They could have been gone in that one split second. That could have been it. That could have ended them just like that. Good morning and goodbye. That goodbye could happen to any of us at any given time and there's part of me that wishes I didn't know that; and the other part of me that wants to learn from knowing it.

That's it. We're fragile, fleeting, heartbroken glass.