LIFE, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT...

A friend I had a conversation with the other day told me she was having a few problems in her family life. I asked her what the problem was and all she could tell me is "LIFE." Point of fact, it wasn't really a conversation in the traditional sense since there were no words exchanged between us but it was a text conversation, therefore her use of the word "life" was probably easier to say then typing out the whole problem.

Most middle income and lower income people, in my opinion, at one time of another have felt the strains of having no exposable income or an income that doesn't seem to stretch as far as we would like it. I make a fare amount on a yearly basis, more than many of my own friends and neighbors. I have no children. I'm single. And I have no pets nor my own house, yet every year I feel poorer and poorer when I should be richer and richer. We all have this feeling that no matter how much money we have we never seem to rise above our standing; we remain in a fixed situation in which every time manage to pull our heads above water there is always something to pull us back under. This can come in many different forms from an unpredictable pregnancy to government incarceration, a death/birth in the family and this is just the big things. Lets not forget about the small things such as Christmas which is always a drag on our finances, marriage (or a divorce), unpredictable medical bills or surgery, an additional family member in the house (or the exit of one). Then there are the rise and fall of gas prices and property taxes (among other types of taxes) and a plethera of other nuks and crannies that I can't even possibly imagine.

I on the other hand work over sixty hours a week and make a lot of money yet I'm always broke paying off old bills, paying off new bills, and then the biggest offense - paying off bills that I shouldn't even have. I make over $40k a year and yet at the end of it all I have very little. In the last five years I've had my car broken into twice, four of my cameras stolen, my appartment burned down, destroyed a laptop (my life's blood in my line of work), totalled my car (which lead to getting a new car), my tools stolen, and this is just the beginning. Most of this stuff had to be replaced...or that is what I've been told to think.

Most of this stuff has been replaced to a degree (although my replacement camera was also stolen...go figure...) and what hasn't been replaced I've gotten along fine without. It's just that latesly I've put so much money, time, and energy into the physical things that I own or I am attached to and completely forgotten what I should be spending my money on. Right now, I'm paying off a 2006 Jeep Liberty with high insurance, a school loan that's been kicking my ass since I graduated college, insurance I believe is too high, and an IRS bill for 2003/2004 taxes of which I will paying for for the next 12 months. All this amounts to a lot of bills and not enough money to pay them all off regardless of how much money I actually do make. LIFE - you gotta love it.

My friend...she has problems of a different sort. She's trying to get a divorce, handle her three children (two of which are twins who seem to hate each other), and deal with the fact that she's on unemployment because she was fired from her good job for something she was not responsible for. She seems to think she has bad luck and LIFE is trying to bring her down.

Life doesn't purposefully try to bring anyone down. It is not a "thing" or "entity" that thinks about what its going to do before it does it. It just is what it is. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Call it the Devil if you like. It is nothing more than a set of circumstances meant to test you to your fullest capacity. Without these tests and challenges we'd be nothing more than a hollow existence. A shell to be broken. LIFE has no ulterior motive. When a vocation destroys a small village or a hurricane kills a hundred people - LIFE is not made at us. It isn't malevolent. It is what it is- that is all, and even though we give these disasters names like Katrina or 9-11 that doesn't mean that they should be personified as such. They are what they are and we are what we are.

We all live on this small chunk of rock known as Earth (which we've also personified) and life has been here before us and it will be here long after us and to think that it has some ulterior motive against us is symply ridiculous. We should make good on the gift that we have all been given (whether it be by chance or God or whatever your particular belief) and make best the life we have and not the one we wish we had. We should not be afraid of the coming storm nor run away when you are facing down the worst fear of your life. We should bare our feet down in the gravel, stand our ground, and make damn sure that we won't let anything tear us asunder. That's what life is. That's what it's all about and once you forget that then you're no longer living.

You're dying and isn't that the greatest tragedy of them all - living a life that you've never really lived at all?