Digging for the truth

It’s digging for the truth. I can’t help what others do. I can’t live their lives for them (though that didn’t stop me from trying in the past.) I’ve gotten to the age where I look at people I know and say, wtf? We’re starting to get up there. We’re starting to hear people our age, and even younger, dying. Getting or got those perpetual wrinkles around the eyes, across the eyelids. Long cheeks. Sometimes kind of a haggard look to them. And I’m seeing people sort of setting in concrete, something I never want to do but is probably inevitable. I’m seeing crazy and twisted and weird and scary and lonesome and sorrowful and mean. And you can’t help but talk about it. Comment on it. And every time I hear myself doing that, every time I catch myself commenting on someone’s behavior, I pull back. Quiet. I can only worry about myself.

We all get to the same place. We all end up in the same place, in that wooden box. It’s how we get there that matters. And I know I won’t reach Nirvana this time around, but I want to be closer to it than when I started this run. And I can’t do that worrying about someone else. And I’ve learned to sit real still. Maybe keep that picking and strumming hand moving a bit. Just easy and slow. A small splash of golden liquid in a glass near my elbow.