FIRING BLANKS, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, REVOLVING DOORS
I make a case for these maddening upheavals of life. The one that makes even the best of us doubt our purpose, our stand and place in life. One moment you are soaring, gliding and invincible. Your life is an impregnable fortress, your drive and focus; a thick mass of floating bubble, nothing seems to pop you or down you and the next moment you are smack at the bottom of the barrel, struggling to breathe, straining to live another day, wallowing in the muddiest part of the quicksand that swallows you deeper and deeper the more you struggle. One moment riding on the crest of the biggest wave and the next, at the mercy of the tides. I have been in such sinusoids too often that I have become so fascinated by my own misery that the need to find meaning, reason and answers have chiefed my mind lately.
When would it all end?
It has become a cycle and the struggle is generic to humans. We are associated directly or indirectly by miseries that we can almost relate with the miseries of others. It is little wonder that tragedies and controversies garner better traction in media. That is largely by the way. It feels like walking through a revolving door that leads nowhere. Circling you round around a point you are unconsciously transfixed to. This door takes you nowhere. One second you are in, the next you are out. In your person, in your right place, in your right senses, in your fittest place, in your happy place, in love, in a good place and mindset and the next you are out/off by any or every context. This is synonymous with Revolving Door Syndrome, when a person has the tendency to get better for a while, and eventually relapsing. Often applicable to serious disorders, such as schizophrenia, but anyone with a mental health condition could potentially be at risk and I assert that we all suffer varying degrees of mental malady.
The more tragic thing is that, your best effort proves abortive. Imagine being an excellent marksman, confident in your abilities to aim, shoot and hit your mark, but all you do is fire blanks. Even with your best aim, you will not hit your mark or make an impact or impression and like walking or running through revolving doors, you are stuck in the cycle, wandering through life like on a target course without scoring a shot. Occasionally, the shards from another persons’ explosion hits your mark and gives you the temporary comfort of fortune, but that in itself tows a person in the line of frustration. Nothing beats the fulfillment of hitting ones’ mark.
I remember seeing a game of Russian roulette in one of the handful movies I had seen this year. I found the similitude of this lethal game of chance with the chance games we play daily with our lives on our quest to make meaning, make something out of life, in spite of firing blanks and walking/working through/with our revolving door syndromes. A single round/bullet is placed in a revolver, the cylinder spun, and the muzzle placed against the head or body (of the opponent or themselves), and the trigger pulled. If the barrel aligns with the loaded chamber, the weapon will fire, killing or severely injuring the player. Life has a revolver pressed against our temples, a bullet in each gun for every living soul walking the planet. We are all aware of it, many of us live through the fear of death each passing second, while many others have made their minds oblivious of the ever present threat to our lives. The sad truth is, life has a bullet in your name and no one will escape. Some of us live through risk laden situations and hazards that the chances of the alignment of the chamber and the barrel increases exponentially.
To live through life with a revolver pressed to your head, running through revolving doors while firing blanks is just overwhelming. While I figure it out, I write time and again to steady your boats and mine too, through the storms. By now, I reckon that you must have figured out that I am as much an expert in living as you are. No one is an expert at living. We seek the pages of knowledge, experiences and teachings to find hacks and fixes, but nothing is absolute. Situations differ as much as solutions, relative to place and time and there would never be a perfect fit/fix for these things. Like you, I have been haunted by the size of my imagination. It has tested me in ways I cannot fathom. I have walked through revolving doors and fired blanks. Scratch that, I am smack in my own revolving door. I am firing blanks too. But if you have been observant, you will notice that, the roof is falling, the walls are caving and chaos is a commonplace in the world. Nowhere is safe. You cannot stop or stand, you should keep moving or you get cut down even faster. The falling roof can crush you and the one who stops running is liable to the stray bullet too. I cannot promise a haven if you keep running, but if you stop running and you die in your revolving door, you will never know. Keep running, keep going, keep fighting.
