it could be considered comical.

It's interesting how serious we all take life. We wake up, often times in worry about so many things that we have so little control over. Both our dreams and our nightmares are plagued with ill thoughts or overrated desires of things that could both break and bend us, lift and soar us, and utterly-everything in between. I find myself day dreaming large parts of my life away with thoughts of how things could have turned out better, how I could be famous now, or really rich, or skinny, or maybe not single, all things of no inherent value on an eternal scale; temporal desires so to speak.

I get annoyed by happy people. Even reading that sentence makes me want to vomit. Not because being happy is wrong, just because often times, immaturely, I look at happiness as a facade to reality. I believe that happiness is found in the raw midst of a potent dose of truth; I struggle to believe that happiness is a surface level antidote to the painful reality that life can be a cold, dark, and painful place. I've always been one to consider myself a realist; I look at the glass not as half full, not as half empty, but I look at it like its a glass; probably an old jelly jar if it came from my childhood-cupboard. Something I'm coming to realize as of lately is that pessimists are always pissedamists, optimist are always chewing napalm and smiling serenely, and realist are never real with themselves.

I've been fighting the utter-awkwardness of battling reality lately. I don't know if I watched too much MTV cribs as a child, or if I just thought that my neighbor, who was apparently sponsored by Miller Lite (he had hats, jackets, jean jackets, vests, and flags with the ML logos) purchasing lotto tickets was the cool thing to do. Living in Southern California lends one to internal conflicts of understanding the primacy of those of us who make $8 an hour; almost fooling us to believe that we too drive Bentleys and hang with hot chicks all day. Waking up and groggily walking outside to realize my 93 Burgandy Buick is not a Lambroghini has yet to set in, I'm still living on a prayer.

I guess one who reads this would have to struggle vigorously through the ill-written lines of comma abuse and frantically-fragmented sentences to discover what the true intention of my writing is here. However, to me, I am just beginning to realize that uncovering the story within, the real me, is so much more meaningfully than trying to recreate who I was, who I am, and who I will truly become. I feel like for so long I've been discombobulated with thoughts of inferiority on so many levels, but, when you begin to realize that at the core of everything we are as people, we were all blown to life from dirt by a Creator, all full of blemishes and mishaps, undeniable no matter what we wear or drive.
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As life unfolds for me down here in beautiful and wealthy SoCal I find myself unpeling layers and layers of the superficiality I once so happily dwelt in, almost wholeheartedly in spite of how much falsified happiness is seen here. Like the sun darkens the skin, the light of reality shines upon the fakeness of those who hide from life and their shallowness beams through. I don't want to be a man of minimal character and nontransparent-integrity; I want to be far from phony. However, to be above reproach I can't chose to live life pretending to be someone I'm not; assuming I'm doing this all right, or that I'm doing things any better than the guy sitting next to me at starbucks (who I'll have you know is talking to himself, arguing, and I think 'he' is winning?).

I want to laugh at life. Not laugh at life like a crazed Pentecostal laughs at the sky or like a child laughs after a drug-dosage from dental surgery, I want to be able to laugh at those things in life that make deep crevices on the surface of the majority. Not to laugh at their pain, but to be able to laugh away the notion that this life has the right to get the best of who we are, and what God is doing in and through our lives.

I laugh alone sometimes; almost an oxymoron I guess. Being alone is not typically a laughable situation, but, often times I smile the biggest when I'm sittin-solo somewhere, just pondering the great comedy in which we all play our parts. So, I will chose this day as I have in the past to live life with a grin and a smirk, hoping to find joy in trials and find peace in calamity.

Thanks for reading,