Beans and the Abyss

I am teetering on the edge of the ridiculous abyss. I manage, for swaths of time, to foray towards lighter, simpler dynamics but these always seem to manifest only in a forced, feigned effort to pull back; settle, and I begin losing my mind. I am wired to struggle against complacency. I know this after over five decades of life strewn with varying reactions to varying, often remarkable scenarios. My focus, like any human, is towards broader contentment, but I continually find myself battling with the painfulness of what are, in this paradigm, unrealistic dreams. Success would be resigning myself to the level of, this will do. But I can never manage it because I can't convince myself of its worth on a cellular level. It feels, well, wrong.

I can't be the only one experiencing this, can I? There must be others out there who find themselves, now and again, standing in the grocery store in the bean aisle (8, I think)when, for no discernible reason, all of the colours on the labels appear more vivid. The rest of the store falls away and the well-researched music playlist becomes incoherent data meant for torture. There is nothing but these shelves of beans and I am terrified. How did I get here? (How did Chick Peas get here?) This is what life has become, and, in that moment, breathing stops being autonomic. Should I try more fiercely to trick myself so that I look forward to the tedium of present-day human expectation? Must I lower my sights so that the insane loops of mindless activity thrill me? How about telling myself a juicy lie upon waking in the morning, like, "This is fun!" Or distracting myself with, "Let's see how many cans of beans the abyss will hold, and show it on Youtube!" Viral? You bet!

I think part of the problem is that I sense that we are better than this. We are better than warehousing our elderly, letting this growth economy drive us out of our minds, and expounding on fighting disease as long as it involves donating money instead of changing lifestyle. We know that education should be free, unless of course we are compelled by our arrogance to nurture a robust stratum of oppressed for us to blame things on. I know, blah, blah, blah. This isn't rocket science. We have succumbed to too much financial competition and not enough fleshy, heartfelt caring. (Oh, and by the way, thank goodness for rocket science!) And why the hell is Wellness such a growing industry? Shouldn't we be good at this on our own by now? Shouldn't belly dancing while surfing be the hot thing instead, or discovering the delightful hologram capabilities of cauliflower?

And just what the fuck does the term Mental Health mean? Does it mean tucking in and riding with the zeitgeist? Or, does it mean acknowledging a nod from something deep inside that knows that all of this is nuts? Because this is nuts.

Well, I am fucking bored of it all. Aren't you? I crave something different. There has to be...there IS more than this, I know it. We've been living long enough that we should be so much better at it:

Nobody should have to take a fucking knee. 

I should not be dreading the days as I do. I want to be excited instead. I know I have to be more realistic, but it would be nice if the real part of the word didn't blow so badly. And, also, if the abyss wasn't so, you know, abysmal. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that it won't be found by settling for less. 

This is not fine.

And please don't tell me that, "this will have to do," because it can't, and I will wrestle you in the parking lot on that point and I will win and you will be embarrassed. We have the greatest capacity to make good change. If we don't, and we wait, I fear many of us will lose our balance.