Life's Big Lessons

I keep thinking there should be some unifying theme of my interactions here in life, like my existence is the subject of some moral-of-the-story movie where the way things turn out never really matters. An awkward encounter with a friend seems like it should find a common theme with something I read in a book that day, a sudden realization that jars my head onto the track I've been missing. In some ways it's like that. The themes don't come neatly packaged though, no commercials half way so you can refill your cup, but nevertheless I'm compelled to believe that there is some justice to the experiences of the day. Justice, in that there is something to be learned by just living; it's not all seeking cathartic moments. And maybe that's the theme of every day, that we waste too many as unconscious doers, as though each passing day were a formality on the way to some vacation. Maybe that's why we're so stressed out. We all grew up asking why, some of us get to be the big thinkers who get paid to keep on asking. But why did we ever stop? We seem to think that the answer to "why" will always be unsatisfying by its very nature, like our whole life is some rhetorical question to which the idiot in the back of the room keeps shouting "Because." Lost in the noise of our discontent is the legitimacy of "Because," that answer that keeps us paying attention because it's worth it. When life's big lessons aren't vacuum-sealed and made to order, we feel cheated - this was supposed to make sense so I could grow. The point is that life's lessons are much more like a box of needles that fell into the shag carpet, and the finger-pricks along the way remind us that we're alive, and that it is not easy.