Life Absurd

If Jack Kerouac met Alex P. Keaton at a bar in Florida and they decided to create a human (or Frankenstein-type creature using themselves as a model), you would have me.

There’s a part of me who longs to be in the wind, traveling from place to place, writing about who I meet and what I learn along the way in the most irreverent of fashions. And there’s a part of me that enjoys speaking about market fluctuations and believes there is no quick fix to anything. Hard work and putting in time is the key to success.

I am at odds with myself regularly. Perhaps you are too.

The part of me who is most often shot down (not allowed to do what she wants) would like to spend the evening conversing with carnies or people who work the waterways going from port to port hearing their bawdy stories and raising glasses to their triumphs and their regrets. I long to know what it’s like to live outside of convention.

But I would stand out among them. While I would laugh and enjoy the stories, I would likely be a “stick in the mud” compared to their adventures.

Conversely, I could attend court in the hallowed halls of academia enjoying the therums and exchanges of people with big brains. I could, that is until I made a joke or inserted my sarcasm into the conversation where people were not nearly inebriated enough to enjoy it.

In high school, I took AP and honors classes but the snide, sideways looks I got from my classmates made me sure they believed I was the dumbest in the class.

I could’ve kept my sarcasm to myself (I suppose).

But I just can’t take this thing (life) so seriously. It’s absurd. People are irrational. We can want one thing and do everything in our power to avoid getting it. (I’m pretty certain that is the definition of polite society.)

No matter how strong our minds, our bodies will fail us or vice versa. We are delicate creatures. All of us. Even the toughest warrior. One little nick on the wrong spot, and it’s over in minutes. (I often like to point this out and that’s what makes me terribly unpopular among professional students. Few like to embrace absurdity except perhaps the philosophers.)

But it’s that very absurdity that makes life worth living. It’s the unexpected joys and sadnesses that become the greatest stories. It’s the interesting dualities and complications that motivate. Take the cormorant, for instance. It’s a water bird that eats fish yet it was made/born without the necessary oils on its body to shed water (ever hear the phrase, Like water off a duck’s back?Ducks have oils that repel water from being absorbed and weighing them down. Lucky things.)

Well, the poor, unloved cormorant stepped out of line during the eon when evolution was handing out buoyancy to sea birds. (Another absurd fact — who knew buoyancy had a uo combination and not an ou? Ridiculous.)

Because of this lack of oil, these poor sea birds have to air out their wings periodically. If they don’t they’ll sink.

Who in the world thought that one up? A seabird without the necessary gifts from nature to survive.

The world is full of things that don’t make sense, things that go against our belief systems or expectations. These absurdities are there to get our attention, to motivate us, to offer the potential to learn or thrive. (Well, maybe not the cormorant one. That’s just a weird flaw in nature.)

Absurdities make us pause. They give us time to explore and wonder. They invite us to stop and ask ourselves, can you believe that?. Maybe you can. Maybe you say, yeah, that makes sense. Or maybe you use that moment to think, wait? What?

And that’s where a truly magical thing happens.