Lost in Equation

“Dude,” this guy says to me,

the point is to realize it’s a game and just let it happen without it bothering you so much

the game is formatted so you’ll get all these distractions, like having to deal with irritating people, and waking up to an alarm clock, and deciding whether you’re gay or not, and pretending that you weren’t really interested in buying that status symbol watch, and cancer, and thinking you’ve just wasted two hours of your life watching a bad movie, and wondering if there’s something wrong with you since everybody else seemed to like that movie

there’s these points you’re supposed to score, like when someone’s bothering you and you’re able to tolerate them, you get good points for that, or when you read instruction manuals instead of porno, more good points there

and people talk about Heaven, and going to Heaven, and being good here on Earth so when time’s up, you go to the good place

problem with that is, there’s this imaginary line that separates good and not good, and depending on who you talk to, that line’s real fuzzy

so what happens is you spend a chunk of your life keeping a close track of these points, where you are in terms of the point system, did you do enough good things to wipe out the bad things, should you do more good things especially if you think you’re gonna die soon, or should you start doing bad things now since you basically just did good things most of your life up until now and screw God and the system ‘cause you deserve to sin once in a while

what I’m telling you is there’s no points system, and there’s no big ledger in the sky that keeps track of every single thing that you do or think

everything here, including all of us around you, are just obstacles.

that big house was created to make you forget that big houses aren’t all that important, that hot wife was created to make you forget that hot wives aren’t all that important, that shiny car was created to make you forget that shiny cars aren’t all that important

when you were born, and sometimes when you wake up in the morning, and especially when you’re sick as a dog with flu and nothing else matters except having enough soup and tissues, you remember that original feeling, that most, if not all things, aren’t that important

that original feeling doesn’t have a point system, it’s basically a pass/fail deal, you either get it or you don’t, and if you do get it you have to make sure you keep reminding yourself of it because it’s easy to forget

so you’re wondering what you should do next

the trick is to just do what you were gonna do at the very very beginning of today and not worry about anything else, because what you were gonna do when all of this started was probably something worth doing

and when you’re done with that, do the next thing on your original list that’s worth doing, and keep going

hey, I bet watching bullshit TV and gossip wasn’t part of your original list, was it?

the world around you was created by your own mind, and there’s no winning it or losing it

there’s only recognizing it, accepting it for what it is, and not worrying too much about trying to solve the equation.