God, what a waste...

It's nothing short of remarkable.

Life, that is.

And how quickly it seems to end for some. Seemingly capricious. Whimsical. Happenstance. Unfair. Overdue. Saddening. Regrettable. Take your pick.

I don't think I can genuinely call him a friend, in the strictest sense of the word, but, in my mind, he was more than just an acquaintance. For seven years I saw him almost every week at church. I saw him in the hallways at school. He played lacrosse with me for two years. We rode in the same, tiny, little truck for work two summers running. Then. Then I didn't see him or hear from him much for seven years. There were stories and rumors. He got into drugs. Began to smoke and drink. Got married. Had a daughter. Dunno how true or reliable everything I heard may have been. But he was still there.

Saw him at the grocery store a few years back. At Orem's Summerfest. Rediscovered via Facebook.

Not friends. Strangers though? That's too strong.

We fought. Verbally mostly, although sometimes physical. Never did I end the day upset or resentful of him. Smart kid; quick-witted -- frustratingly so for a person like me. Slashing retorts. Charismatic as hell.

Perhaps he was too smart for his own good. I've heard that cliche a lot. Still not sure what it means. But, in this case, it's a perhaps. Lost? A little. Directionless? Earlier, I'd guess. Unmotivated? Again, earlier, I would suppose.

Unfortunately, we weren't great friends. Unfortunately, we didn't speak often. Unfortunately, it peaked at little quips and comments on Facebook. Unfortunately, I don't know what he was dealing with in his life.

Now? Now it's too late. God, it's too late. And now it just seems like a terrible and fucked up situation. Now his daughter won't see her daddy anymore. His parents and brother and half-siblings don't get to talk with him. Friends don't get the pleasure of seeing him. The whatever-we-ares don't get the always-thrilling-to-hear-from-someone-you-actually-like-but-don't-really-hear-from-very-often calls/texts/comments/whatever.

I'm not condemning him. Like I said, I don't know what was happening. I heard what probably gave him that final push, and I have no idea how I'd take that same event if it were to happen to me. I'm not condemning him. I didn't really know him by now. Not friends...but something close, I'd hope. God, I'm not condemning him.

The only word that keeps running through my head is unnecessary.

I know people loved him. I know he had things going for him. Yet I can totally relate to being alone and lonely in somewhat similar circumstances. It doesn't always matter what other people can clearly see from the outside, and I'm more than fairly certain everyone knows how empty it can seem in the all too personal and private hells we sometimes deign to confine ourselves to, and there's not a person who can make someone feel lower than they themselves can.

Dammit, I know I'm not the first person to feel this way. I know I won't be the last. Did it really have to end this way? Wasn't there something anyone -- anyone at all -- could have said or done? Did it have to end so abruptly? With such torment and anguish? I can only imagine the demons saddled to his back at the time; only guess at the pains they were causing; only hope it ended quickly and less painful than life seemed to be.

He wasn't perfect, but that's no shortcoming. I've decided that's what I love best about people. Our cataclysmic failures to live up to our own expectations and to others' standards. Because it's what genuinely brings us together. We can relate because we can laugh and cry and love and hate but still...feel. It makes us dependent on each other. And, yeah, similar to the night sky there are billions of little stars glimmering softly and for me, personally, I don't notice when some may go out and some perchance will appear in different places. But I knew where his was. It meant something to me. And even if a hundred or a thousand or a million stars come into place around and make everything that much brighter, that one is still missing and it meant something to me and a lot of other people. We'll still notice (forgive the sappy metaphor).

My brother said it best, I think: I hope you're in a better place now...

You are missed. You will be missed. We all love you, Travis.

What is greater than the written word?

...but truth is so great a thing that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it. Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experience has no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of events is unsure, by reason they are always unlike. There is no quality so universal in this image of things as diversity and variety.

~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

I've heard tidbits. I've read quotes. I've heard good things. I've read little. But what little I've read of Monsieur Montaigne has whetted my appetite for more. It's not so much his skepticism that draws me, rather it's his recognition that wisdom comes from within and not from any outside source. And that's what I need right now. Wisdom.

I've precious little of everything else.

I love quotes from people I deem to be sage. Even when these sagacious folk from the past urge to not look toward others for sagacity. Yet such an epiphany would have happened much later in my life without these whispering ghosts, which leads me to believe I don't ever really understand what they were trying to say, but which M. Montaigne delineates as well. Perhaps we read into these great philosophers' and authors' and poets' and scientists' works too much. Is it because we deign these individuals to be so great it becomes inconceivable we have the intelligence to fathom or plumb the depths of their machinations, and ultimately accept their prose as it is presented? That we are so inferior and beneath their collective greatness that the very simplicity which some of these passages or themes bludgeon us in the mind is to be discarded as incorrect?

Suppose, perhaps, on the off-chance these masters of their respective languages improbably -- as countless critics will assure -- meant exactly as they wrote and our common, simple interpretations thereof are precisely what they wanted the reader to discern.

That is a novel idea.

Yes, if I'm to change one thing about myself from now until my body lies in the earth it will be to accept whatever understanding I glean from these titans and from whomever else I learn -- even a tittle -- as something good. It may not be what the author intended. It may not be a generally accepted conception. It may not be right. But I am as I am.

Oh ho, Descartes... cogito ergo sum, right? Sure, maybe a bit out of context.

But.

No one else knows what I think. No one else knows what I've been through. No one else knows what it's like to be me.

I've been told by professors and read that relativistic subjectivism is a dangerous philosophy to base life upon. Indeed, it is often looked down upon and considered a kind of cop-out, if you will. However, the more I think on it the more I am led to believe it is necessary for ambiguities to be part of life, and our American law at least demonstrates this in a small way. Children are tried differently from adults. The mentally insane are given some lenience, feigned or not, and it is an imperfect system. I will not argue that. But is God not the same? Am I seriously to believe that I will be judged in the same manner as the Savior of the world? Tried the same as a person born into completely different circumstances in completely different times in a completely different world with completely different paradigms? Would it really be just for me to be tried and held under the same accountability as some poor pagan who has no inkling at all of things which I believe? Tried the same as people who hold differing ideals in varying levels of import?

I can't believe so.

I can't believe anyone would ever want to be me. I can't believe I would ever want to be somebody else since, in fact, I barely know myself. Every day, droll in its own way, whether through sheer boredom or complete panic or intense laboring or whatsoever it happens to be, teaches me at least something about myself. Typically it seems to be a reinforcement of giving in to my wallowing, but with the hope that I hate and am ill-content with how things are currently. The day that ends with self-contentment I hope to be my last. Much as I loathe my internal struggles, in addition to those which are external, they are much needed for my psyche's well-being. My constant inner-prayer is that my time awake is not real, that I am still eighteen years old, fresh from high school and about to enter college, that I have not squandered the last decade of living, and that my life has not been reduced to eight fucking dollars an hour whilst seeking refuge at my parents'.

And still, that's not right either.

I'm not one to claim everything happens for a reason. That particular assertion lends me to discredit everything any person who subscribes to such a philosophy says as diluted banal tripe. Rather I'll take from M. Montaigne the acceptance of myself as a work in progress, never to be finished. What wisdom have I learned? Never be perfect according to others. Never be what I'm not. Never become what another ascertains me to be. Never be complete.

Because sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.