Dom Kureen returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Faith gives us a reason to believe that better things are ahead of the futility of this life, it’s also something my recently deceased Auntie and Grandmother had in common.
The difference was that one seemed spiritual through fear and the other through an unconscious belief in something unspecific, the latter of which gave peace to a 53 year old woman taken in her pomp, enabling her to come to terms with an inevitable and tragic demise.
Experience Vs Experiences
If it was merely a matter of longevity for these two beings then my Gran, reaching the ripe age of 86, wins hands down. If it is based on what they crammed into those years the script is suddenly flipped.
Into just over half a century, my Auntie squeezed tons of excitement and happiness, always striving to strike her next goal from the proverbial ‘Bucket List’. Hers truly was a beautiful and captivating life. Gran on the other hand seemed to acquire a bitterness and stagnation in the final few decades of her existence… and it was an existence by the end sadly.
Not just a number
It all left me contemplating why this society excessively reveres and fears age. A subject compulsively loitering on people’s lips, we’ve become a planet obsessed with lazy conversation, with this moribund bunkum a default filler for the dead air most dread.
Whether you’re ‘too young’ or ‘too old’ is merely a concept put in place by your own screwed-up mind, coupled with the damaged people around you who help to condition a belief system that for the most part promotes conformity and frowns upon original thought.
Don’t worry, be happy
The aesthetically unappealing scruff who gets filthy looks from judgemental jackasses and shrugs them off is surely happier than the supermodel crying because she ate too many sultanas with her All-Bran three hours earlier.
You want happiness? You have to find it yourself, it isn’t in any self help guide written by a glorified stage hypnotist; although that literature can provide a good launch pad for sure. Still, on its own and without your co-operation and discipline it’s about as much use as an AK47 in the hands of a bow legged toddler.
Hall of mirrors
I feel most sorry for those riddled with avoidable insecurity, who spend their lives making up tall stories in order to feel more accepted by a collective that doesn’t really give a fig about them, other than as a source of self preservation, with each effort to impress the wrong people providing another illusion among a hall of ashen mirrors.
There isn’t always an obvious solution, I guess the only thing to do is jam as much into the trip as possible and not be bound by the opinions of others.
I don’t have the solution, maybe I just finally accept that there isn’t one, other than to be authentic, do what you love and find a path to get to where you want to be, much like my trailblazing Auntie did.
