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AdageAll that rot
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Decade 171005Growing up, I used to love watching and catching bugs and grubs from our yard. Our lawn was fertile, our fruit trees were always bountiful, and our landscaping was lush in comparison to the sunburnt surroundings of Bumfuck, Queensland.
"You're turning a decade old," I remember thinking to myself. Shortly before I turned the grand old age of ten, I found myself sitting on the lip of our driveway one muggy afternoon, watching an army of ants try to pull part of a potato chip into their anthill. They were your normal garden variety ants, but I found them fascinating. Repeatedly, they tried to cram and jostle this chip, and repeatedly, they failed. If it were to scale, it would've been like trying to fit a car through your front door. I followed the trail of ants back to an incriminating empty-ish packet lying next to our verandah. Some ants seemed to be greedier than others, eating their chip there. The others were taking crumbs back to the rest, held triumphantly above their tiny little flecks of bodies. I don't remember when I started, but the mystery of life had been on my mind. Why were we born? Why do good people die? Being raised in a 'fire and brimstone' Catholic household, I often wondered why, if our God was so angry and vengeful, then why doesn't he scrap the world and start again? What happens when you die? What would I buy if I had a kazillion kajillionty dollars? Why do people kill each other? Why don't bugs rule the earth? Why are adults so serious? Why isn't anything simple? Why are our relatives overseas rich but still very poor? Why don't poor people have money? Why do rich people have too much? Why does mum make us eat tripe? Why, why, why. I was always full of questions, and a lot of the more serious ones remain unanswered. The less serious, I'm happy to leave well enough alone. I put my attention back on the first group of ants and saw that they'd started breaking the chip into smaller pieces. It was working, slowly but surely, and the chip disappeared into their home to be divvied up amongst the lot. Satisfied that I had seen a part of ant history or ant evolution, I found a lone ant on the driveway and squished it dead with my finger. I wondered if he had a little family, and if any of them knew where he was. I wondered if he had big plans for himself, or if he was one of those unlucky-in-life ants -- like 'businessmen' who wear short-sleeved shirts with long ties. I felt bad for ending the ant's life. Not only did my finger smell like death, but I was also overwhelmed with the uncertainties of life. I realised that my life had only really just begun, and while that should've been a huge relief to know -- a sort of guarantee, since I'd never known of children dying under any circumstance -- I felt panicked. Panicked that I hadn't been told by anybody what I should be doing with my life. I wondered who would/could squish me if they found themselves bored one muggy afternoon. I made a conscious decision to make sure I aimed high and do great things before I died. I thought about that for a very long time, and sometimes I still do. I was young, but even back then I fluctuated between believing in myself and my secret superhuman ability to do great things if I pushed myself hard enough, to believing that everything I do now doesn't matter, because I'd only be working towards death. Eleven years later, and I still don't know arse from tit. I know it's naive for me to think it'd make sense to anybody at any given age, but a sign that I'm doing alright would be nice. A guarantee that what I'm working so hard for won't fall to shit like that poor little ant I crushed. "You're turning a decade old." Post-post SOC: Note that this post is not religious. I don't know why I wrote this tonight. I guess I've been pondering the origins of certain quirks I have, quirks that shit me to tears. I can be very hard on myself, but for me, that's the only way things will get done. I don't do very well when I'm left alone with my thoughts, as I seem to spiral uncontrollably, applying existential rhetoric to my own life, an explanation to my successes and failures. Right now, I'm unsure of a lot of things: my patience, my temper, glory and consequence, my own self-worth, my place in the grand scheme of things, how to handle change when it comes good, my pride, my regrets, my plans, my humility, and my ability to be thankful for the things and people I have in my life. Lately, I've been heavily questioning the only faith I've known, rely on, and believe an iota -- my faith in myself. I'd like to think that I'm an eternal optimist, but in reality, I'm only like that because I expect the very worst in every situation. |