Why Are We Here?

In Memory of My Friends:
Ruthie Haynes and the Donn Brothers
you all died too young

I watched this video How to Identify and Collect Psilocybin Mushrooms  and thought "I don't BELIEVE we used to do stupid sh*t like that" ... drive by a cow pasture after a rain (today we say "what cow pasture?") but yeah, we REALLY did have cow pastures in our little "urban" areas, anyway, drive by and say "wow, dude, cow pies, there might be MUSHROOMS" and we'd all pile out of the van and go digging around in cow sh*t looking for "purple rings" so we could run back home, brew some tea, make Kool-Aid or wine spritzers and try to commit suicide (or murder most foul if you let your friends drink it first)!!  Because, by today's standards and with our gradually maturing hindsight, we now UNDERSTAND that is exactly what we were doing.   

The great security and romance versus the inherent risk and tragedy of youth is the total inability to visualize MORTALITY.  Men and women "of a certain age" see their mortality crystal freakin' clear ... if we are up to 3D? 4D? then mortality is like 50D at that "certain age" and gets more clear daily. We are old, there isn't much that we haven't seen or done at least once... more if we liked it.

My heart tells me THAT is why we are here ... we are here to get old.  Don't panic. I'll get to "why some die too young and some don't".  I've heard it said that we are born to die and there is definitely truth in that statement. It's factual, undeniable, no 99.9% correct there - it's signed in blood, these old bodies are definitely going to poop the party but WHY are we here if it's just to die? First, I DO believe in eternal life, but I'm not into that at this moment ... my question is why the journey? and why do some live to see a one hundred  and others one day?  Whether or not you believe in eternal life and if you don't perhaps MORE so ... you must wonder "what is the point?" ... "why these hills and valleys?" ... "why is life so f*cking difficult?"

Simple.  I think we are born to grow older and wiser ... it is our ultimate destination, the culmination of our journey and whether we live like it or not, the mentally healthy among us do grow wiser.  ALL the sh*t that happens to us, how we act, react, the roads we take, people we meet, the people (and pets) we lose, it's our history and we learn from it, often too late.  We all know someone who died too young and each of those deaths should have taught us something.   It sounds silly even to me but I believe THAT was their purpose in life.  We have absolutely NO idea how the Lord might have used that person to further His greater goal.  Again, I don't want to muddy the waters here with religious overtures ... I simply believe that not one single life is taken or lost that cannot be used to achieve good, even achieve a greater good and perhaps, just perhaps, that was the way it was meant to be from the day that person was born.

There is no denying that each death of someone you knew or loved as a child, teen, young adult impacted you ... maybe even in ways you didn't or still don't recognize.  Multiply that by every single person who knew the person, knew about the death or might later LEARN about the death. It's just not that hard for me to imagine a death of seemingly little importance, impacting someone who will profoundly change the future. The dichotomy of death is that it can be both beautiful and tragic.  The beauty is that it can change other lives for the better, the tragedy is when we waste the opportunity to MAKE their death meaningful. Learn from it, use it to save another life, let it change us for the better.

ALL our experiences, the highs and lows, the pain, the pleasure, the sacrifices and rewards shape us, how we REACT to all that stimuli becomes who we are ... Ultimately, we each in our own way become history. It is our purpose to share the stories that made us survivors, that led us to our destination, good or bad, right or wrong.  Often the most negative of outcomes can bring the most positive change in the lives we touch.  We can teach even if we are not "teachers", we can guide with our "school of hard knocks" wisdom, we can tell what we did wrong and what we did right, what worked and what turned out to be epic fails, every single one of us has the power in us to hold out our hand and help someone else become a better person.  THAT I believe is our purpose in life ...