People Are Fragile

Hello. People are fragile. They are really really really really fragile. Let me give you two example, both of which are very close to me. My Grandfather is very fragile. Let me give you context. His family came from Mexico. I don’t know all the details, but I know they weren’t rich. In fact they were very poor. My great grandfather died when my grandfather was in the sixth grade. Being the oldest male (He had one older sister), it was his job to provide for the family now. So he went to work. He started working in the fields and kept working since. Like I said I don’t know all the details, but I know that that man has worked the entirety of his life. He delivered the sugar for a sugar mill and went up north with his family, my father’s family, to pick fruit as migrant workers. He had five children, four sons and a daughter. Each had several kids between them. I have somewhere between 10 to 15 cousins, each ranging from different ages. The oldest is 32 and already has 4 kids of her own and the youngest, my brother, is in the 3rd grade. Each are at different stages in their lives, whether they are starting a family, applying for the police force, entering college (I’m here), or barely starting high school. All the while my grandfather has been working to support his family and his grand children when they asked for it. Until a couple of years ago, when he retired for good. From there it was a downward spiral. His health started to deteriorate, he barely comes out of his house anymore, and he barely talks to anyone. Everyone in the family has been telling him what to do. “You have to walk more” “You have to eat more” “You can’t stay in the house all the time” . How could a proud, working man be reduced to such a state? His whole life he worked, and worked, and worked, and worked, and this is what he gets? This is what people get when they work this hard? Let’s go to the other example. It’s the same shtick with a little more detail. My mother’s step father, practically a father seeing as she knew him since she was three, is also in place. He was an immigrant from Italy who came on a boat when he was in middle school. He wasn’t necessarily poor, but he wasn’t rich either. So he had to work for what he got. My mother tells me that he worked on the railroads when she was little. There are times he didn’t come home because he was working overtime into the next day. From there he went into construction, owning his own small firm that built houses. Recently he started a project that just didn’t go the way it was supposed to. Things kept going wrong, and the work is no where near finished. He started to get depressed, something that we are all very familiar with. He’s sort of like us in that he’s had it his whole life. My mother told me he used to get it bad when she was a child. A while ago my aunt, uncles, and mother convinced him to settle with the client, pay him, and tell him he can’t do the job anymore. They wanted him to retire for good. This week we found out he is back out there working on the project. He isn’t going to quit. The story is a bit different, but it kind of reads the same. Both have been reduced to such a fragile state. I don’t see the point in it. The beginning, middle, and end. I don’t get it when you “begin” your life picking out whatever job or college you’re going to. I don’t get the middle when you work that job and get that degree and it’s just this long grind over and over and over and over again. And I certainly don’t understand the end when you’re reduced to this fragile, hopeless state. Also don’t bother telling me that “Well it’s because they had shitty jobs and that’s why you go to school to get more money and blah blah blah blah blah” or “You find something you are passionate about and that’s why you keep going blah blah blah”. That’s not the point. This isn’t about money or retiring in comfort or getting a hobby or whatever. It’s about trying to figure out the point to all this. This whole process of living and then dying and then none of it matters. I don’t understand why I or anybody should keep going. Thank you for listening.