Rifling my garbage of memories, kind of auditing my choices and mistakes I’ve made, I realized how many speedbumps, potholes, ditches and wrong turns there had been en route to Shitlifetown, where I’ve taken up lodging. Why did I keep going like that?
I just couldn’t apply the brakes and stop for any course correction. I had no map for my life in front of me either. Okay that’s a dishonest excuse, I guess. Nobody got it except freakin’ Nostradamus. But still so many people make it to Disneyland in season.
Fact is, they made use of their compass and I pawned it off upon hard times. Compass comes in different makes – purpose, happiness, faith, religion, etc. – and is never precise. Mine sure wasn’t. I was seeking my true North and no compass showed it. Others, men and women of the world, put their trust in their compass and followed it even if the damn dial wouldn’t move at all.
In the end, they did get somewhere better than Shitlifetown. Doesn’t matter if the purpose was hollow, happiness shallow, faith deluded or religion out and out demented. Many of them simply didn’t bother about their true North and doggedly drove on towards some fucking North that their faulty compass dictated and behold! they’ve got something to show for it, the men and women of the world! Me, I got nothing but half-assed nihilism and agnosticism.
Given the cocoon of existence within which we pass our lives with no absolutes, is it then better to hold onto some faulty compass, any compass, than none at all? Who knows, I’d have arrived at some shiny happy place as well, where R.E.M’s ‘Shiny Happy People’ loops in the background.