Introduction
While millions
of people sleep their dreams of reason, while many wake up and go to work
around the city, the county, the state, the country, the world, commuting back
and forth, putting their kids in daycare or dropping them off at school,
hustling and bustling; plenty of
responsible people doing their part every day to keep this machine of society
rolling day in and day out, getting paid minimum wage for hard meaningless jobs
to getting paid top dollar to work in places where lies are repeated to keep most
people at bay, I find myself, at the glorious age of thirty-three in the lowest
of places any person can find themselves in: in solitary confinement.
This was not the life I intended
for myself in my innocent youth. I had
dreams of being an astronaut, dreams of racing between the faraway stars,
further dreams of being a ground-breaking scientist, but never did I have
dreams of being a lowly criminal, locked up because of his own bad habits that
had been garnered over the years of living on the lowly scraps of life, thrown
around here and there because there is no respect to be given to people who
live with no respect for themselves.
I have no one to blame but myself
for being in this predicament. I have
followed my own bad way of life, and it has led me to this dark corner of the
universe. Here in this spot, I am
alone. I have no one to talk to, no one
to tell my secrets to, no one to hear my story, this very story that I am
writing.
For too long, I have led a life
in which I never existed. I never
believed my true self was out in this world, so I went along with whatever life
had to offer me. I never took life by
its reigns and chose what I wanted to live.
Rather life lived it for me. What
life threw at me, I rode like a plastic horse on a carousel where someone else
was paying my fare.
When was I going to come off of
this fake horse and touch the ground on my own?
When was the ride and funny music going to end so I could open my eyes
and see that I was on the carousel all by myself?
It is like Descartes, when he is
in solitude in his little house for the winter and he is not content. He felt
that he did not exist in this world until he latched on the notion that he was
able to think for himself. Once he was
able to think for himself, once he was able to just think, he knew that he
existed, because his mind was working on its own. (Cogito, Ergo Sum)
This is what has transpired to
me. I thought deadly for so many years
that when I was actually thinking for the first time, I was so close to my own
death and madness. I had taken off the
pornographic film of life around my eyes and was able to see life for the first
time, but the sad thing was that now, in solitary confinement for who knows how
long, I was never going to taste life for what it really was. For what I saw life was now, was so far from
my grasp, my dreams were o no comparison to what I was missing in real life.
What was different for me this
time was how I was going to live my life, if ever I got out of this solitary confinement? I have read many books on many subjects, but
I never felt any wiser for having read them.
I’ve lived many lives in my thirty-three years, but I had on so many
masks in all the facets of life, that now with my real face on, I did not know
how to truly live in this mad and sane world.
I was to be a new born babe in an
old body coming to terms with life, trying to survive in a world with all the
gunshots of life littering my dull and senseless body.
I have walked to hell, been there
a while and made it back to the rocky ground.
I have found out that I prefer the broken path to the path that has
always been paved in gold.
But the greatest gift I found out
when I came back to the rocky path was that this whole time, this whole life I thought
I was dead, in reality, I was breathing because I was alive and I was happy to
be alive. What I thought was
lifelessness, was actually experience behind my ears. You see, wisdom isn’t gained from reading a
book, but rather wisdom is earned from living a story full of mistakes and how
to live on with the mistakes committed in life.
The whole time I spent searching
for myself, through poems and words and music, it took me being by myself to
understand that I love my fellow man, that I need my fellow woman, because
without humanity, then I can never be a complete human being. None of us could ever be complete by
remaining by themselves, but with friends, family, compatriots, even enemies,
we can tell each other of our life’s journeys and feel complete with living.
I may not have lived long as some
have lived, but what I have seen is through my experience, my life through my
eye, I see how this world turns and this is how I perceive of that world. We all have different opinions and ideals;
there are just a few of what I have seen so far in my young life.
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