to dwell eternally

anyone who knows me well knows that there is a part of me that dwells eternally in the realm of silliness and the absurdly irrational.

i suppose my philosophy has always been to arm myself with the ridiculous rather than to suffer the slings and arrows of the mundane and, all too often, grievous. 

i suppose people such as i have to live this way.  there are too many evils lying in wait around every corner, thieves of joy and demons of chaos wrecking havoc in our lives and there are always dark shadows of pain cast over the paths we must walk.  if one doesn't carry their own light with them on this journey, they'll surely be lost.  lost in the darkness of unforgiving misery, loneliness and despair.  if i must carry a torch of frivolity-maybe foolishness- i'll at least laugh all the way through my life that's been riddled with sorrows from beginning to end.  but i will not rely on the limited resources of the world to illuminate my life.

before you say it seems that i am despondent, pessimistic or jaded, let me say this; i do not say these things because my life has been nothing but tragic, far from it.  there have been a thousand days bursting with light, exploding as supernovae across my life.  however, just as a supernova is the harbinger of death for the star, so do these flashes of light evanesce, slowly vanishing, leaving nothing but a lonely black hole behind.  a void so bereft of life in contrast to the fullness of the blaze that bore it.

  it is true, life is beautiful.  but true beauty can only be measured by the disparity between it, and the beast.  just as weight, height or length would mean nothing without a zero to start from, so does beauty intensify as it's "distance" from hideous increases.  for those whose lives have seen very little of the hideousness this world can host, they are severely limited in their ability to perceive the magnitude of the beauty it may also hold.  after all, we would never see the stellar brilliance of the supernova were the star not about to die.

   i, in my experiences of this life, have seen beauty beyond comprehension.  God's own hand has painted brilliant strokes of grace, hope, joy and love, these strokes so bold and in colors so true i felt i'd before only ever seen the world as monochromatic blasè landscape.  i've known love that's reached such great heights and stretched my heart to bursting, blissful ecstasy that's left me speechless, hope and peace that have saved my mind from horrors untold.  however, i would never have seen these things for what they truly are had i not first seen utter anguish and hopelessness.  pain and sorrow have bared their teeth, and with open claws dug in and torn hearts and lives to shreds.  for every nefarious crime committed against my life, there has been an equally stunning and wondrous blessing to arise and take its place.

as long as i sojourn here, i will carry this torch.  blazing, let it shine on these demons, blind their eyes, while i laugh and say "do your best to destroy me", for i've seen their kind, i know their devious tricks, and for all my scars they've got nothing on me.