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Life’s not Baseball… fair, or foul, you are expected to run the bases.
The plane would only take a few hours to get there. A place where nobody knew you, no connections past a few names to look up, and a location to get to. The need is overwhelming, a constant drone of anguish and dread, these parts of life aren’t scripted, they can’t be. You have never been here before in your life, this town, or this feeling, but you knew you had to come. The tragedy broke your soul once more, the aftermath crushed what remained… Excruciating.
The people lined up politely, the numbers beginning to overwhelm the venue, soon were overwhelming the streets. You had to come because you were invited, as was the world when the grief besieged us once again. Life will leave us lonely, death will leave us alone, and it all is sometimes just too unbearable to stay silent. A man humbly shared the truth, that there would be nobody at the funeral for the wife he lost in a senseless act that shook the nation once more. They were all each other had, and the foul balls of life never stopped them from running the bases. Even now, alone, he is still expected to keep moving. The weight of life… Painful
The reasons why you are here are too numerous to examine, the mood is not one for contemplation, but of solemn peace. Those things will come to you later, after you have done what your immediate attention requires. Humanity needed you as much as you needed humanity, an assist unto the most basic connection to life, us. The weight of the human condition is immense, the depths it tries to push us down to are as dark and void of light as anywhere the imagination can fathom. That immense point of light was gone in an instant for a fellow being, and into the darkness you came. Not a torch or bonfire be, but simply a match… a hope that enough can ignite us once more, unite us once again, and warm us… All
The reason you came cannot be answered in any simple way, but it was all simple wasn’t it? A fellow human being was in immense turmoil, and personal pain, and you are drawn to that, to ease their pain. It is empathy, and it is sympathy, and it is more than that. It is the anger of frustration, the fits of inconceivability and your own history and beliefs. It is your own civility, a stomp on the line of insipid darkness that it shall travel no further, your light will defeat it here too. A match, a spark, a flame to the winds of time that shall not be extinguished… We.
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In a world where you are taught that there is an answer for everything, there is none. That previous line is a fallacy, a myth of such grand proportions we cannot creep from its shadow. There is no more an answer for anything as there is a reason for it, and there is no reason for some of our worst actions, our worst thoughts; They just are. The entirety of our people could learn a great deal by unlearning the idea that… they know. That knowing came to the man from Los Angeles, that flew to El Paso, to help a stranger say goodbye to the one he loved. That knowing came from the Federal Agents, and the Police, the Soccer Moms, and the Veterans who still remain, and remember. Unable to stop the senseless end of life, but more than able to stop it from taking another victim. Loss, gain, life, foul and fair, the bases remain, and the legs are heavy… Air.
In the time that we have here, in life, in this instant, or the greater expanse of things, we are reminded. Those reminders show themselves as life lives through you, life gathers around and upon you. The actions taken, the thoughts produced, and the care that is exhibited, is all a part that tells the old truth. That we are inherently good, and more than the sum of our parts. As the fears and tragedies rise in occurrence, and the senselessness seems to know no bounds. The flights will be more frequent, the needless suffering will ease, and if ever handed a book of matches… Light the darkness when life becomes… Unbearable.
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