When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. This is my religion.

Abraham Lincoln

it all feels so real. that i can make others laugh, juggle all these games and keep the wife smiling all at the same time. that the road ahead is not full of coal but awaiting me like christmas eve, with presents under the tree. it all seems to be well, but this is where the trap awaits. being on an imaginary precipice highlights the descent. for to be up only allows down to await. so i remind myself that this is all going to go away. just like all the good times in the past, just like all of the memories that I had before now, both good and bad, they will all end.

so much hinders on the unknown delicate balance of chance. for fate unfolds like a delicate flower, subject to all the elements of the environment to amplify or destroy it all. seemingly random, this creation and destruction is what gives us meaning. riddled with thoughts of what it and why not, we are all tormented in the meantime with questions of why and why not. a circular spiral of ifs and maybes causing one to feel as if their life was worth the time. as if it were measurable. We do our best to pretend that we are partaking in the outcome, in the order. We speak aloud, our thoughts amplified to remind others and even ourselves that this is how it was meant to be, that this is how it was supposed to be.

but it is all an illusion. this idea of free choice, of ourselves, of these events. as soon as you have time to make sense of them they are gone. like the flowers you find withered in the vase, the dust accumulated on your unused shoes, the friends that are no longer around. a collection of moments whose meaning at most resides in your mind who itself is slipping away. another morning and valley await, promising to give and take a myriad of moments that were never meant to belong to anyone but will make you feel like you are alive if only for the moment. a moment of happiness and sadness reside in my thoughts, a stain, a reminder of the conciliation i must make to myself on tomorrows climb out of bed.