I’ve had a bit of a revelation when it comes to the meaning of life, or rather the meaning of my life. This, I know, needs some qualification because in terms of our very existence there is no meaning to our lives beyond procreation. No grand design, none of the “everything happens for a reason” nonsense. We are here only because of the accident of our birth. That’s the qualification out of the way. I’ve done a bit of a 180 on my outlook on life itself. Sort of.
The big question I have always faced is this: if I had my time again would I have done things differently? The big answer was always YES! I’d have changed everything; every single thing. Why would I not? i don’t look back on my childhood as being particularly happy and fruitful. My scholastic career was a failure, my transition to the world of work saw me in a 40 year dead end that kept bread on the table. The truth was that the main part of my education was essentially self-taught, a case study in autodidacticism. I never knew what I was doing in so many aspects of my life and still don’t. And to this day, I still see the world as being against me, especially now my fair weather friends have all gone. Yes, I’d change everything. Except, digging deeper, I wouldn’t.
Would I have liked to have some guidance as to what to do at school, some support in getting me through it, instead of my never really knowing why I was there? I couldn’t do maths, I couldn’t do any of the sciences, I never really understood the mechanics of English (as you can probably tell from my writing). No one ever paused to think: there must be a reason this boy is doing so badly at school and later at work. Because I could smile a lot, everything was good. I could easily hide the tracks of my tears.
I’m still struggling now and I know that time is running out. I ache and hurt in places I didn’t know were places, but here’s the thing. I have a partner who, if there had been a Heaven (there isn’t) would have been sent from there. I have two amazing sons who make me proud every single day. We have a little house in a quiet ex local authority village which is generally as quiet as the grave and not only can we put bread on the table, we have afford butter, too. If I am well enough, I can go out and visit places that make me feel good. And so far we have been able to afford lovely foreign holidays. I might be stupid but not so stupid that I can’t see the good things in life, many of which I am pretty sure I don’t deserve.
When my depression goes through the floor, what saves me is family and the friends who still take the time to visit, call and contact regularly via cyberspace.
To be in the position where I want life to go on, I have to accept what went before. Much of it was awful but at least I ended up in a world that suits my head. If I had not met my partner, bought our little house and had our children, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t be here anymore, so self-destructive was my nature. I had to have a reason not just to exist but to live. Unlike many poor souls, I have more than one reason.
If you think that this is unusually philosophical by my own low standards, you could be right. I’ll never feel good towards the people who misguided me to the mess my life became, even though they’re all dead now. It was nothing to do with them that I have survived. I’ll always hate myself – the way I am, the way I think, the way I look; all of it – but not enough to want to not be alive. And that makes me lucky. That’s the revelation.
