What Now?

You know the truth--a thing that is immutable, dispassionate in and of itself--and yet your immediate inclination is to run from it. You imagine other things that might be true, other things that might render the real truth false. You want to run because you already know what the pain is like, and yet you know that you are running on air, and in the wrong direction at that, and you know that your unwilling feet must soon hit the ground, and sink, and sink, and sink, and sink.

When you walk on the sucking sands of shit instead of solid ground, you have to walk in a certain way. You have to try not to struggle. You have to try to remain calm. The trick is in using upper body strength. You have to pull yourself up, inch by inch. You have to stay calm, even though you think you are dying, and you have to regain yourself inch by inch, and somehow believe, and somehow have faith, and somehow understand that dreams had always been only dreams and good for the moment but not for balance of time.

For better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless.

So says the teacher, and yet we never will listen, for hope will forever come before hearing.