The shit that shackles us all.
I should be studying for the bar exam, but I’m in no fucking mood for that. If you can tell by my tone, I’m a bit bitter at the moment. The funeral service of my grandma’s great friend and neighbor of 60 years has me thinking big picture again. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for my tutu, the young one of her many circles of friends, to watch her them pass, one by one. She reads the obituaries each morning to keep up to date. For someone so small and so sweet, she shouldn’t have to shoulder such a heavy load. So it goes, I suppose.
Inevitably, I know I’ll be there myself, if I am to be both lucky and unlucky. Considering the immensity of this burden on us all, it blows my fuse to think of debt and other obligations. You know, the fictional ones. The ones that don’t exist if I anchored myself in the middle of the Pacific to serve the rest of my term. Death would surely find me out there, but the deadlines, expectations, and contractual monetary commitments wouldn’t have a shot.
Debt and other obligations may be a reality of sorts, but I cannot see them as anything other than mere fictions. Yes, that debt got me a fantastic education. But that education was supposed to help me become a better member of society. That education was meant to help me live up to my potential and contribute to the larger scene of human existence. That’s not a debt that should be repaid to some bank or some shareholder. That’s not a debt that should be repaid with the equally fictional currency. That’s a debt that should be repaid by action. And for every action there is an equal and opposite tax, so there’s your institutional funding, pragmatists.
All I’m asking for, debt and other obligations, is that you let me do things for no other reason than loving it. Don’t make me do something for money. Don’t make me do something out of fear. Let me keep it real and be me, cause life’s heavy enough as it is. I don’t need no fictional shackle.
The Finite Life 