Slouching into Oblivion

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900 ) The term pack animal is used to describe a beast of burden used to carry heavy loads over long distances such as donkeys and mules. The term also refers to animals that live and hunt in packs such as wolves and hyenas, The best example of both types of pack animals is the human. Like mules, most of us put on blinders each morning and carry the load, doomed to spend a large majority of our lives compulsively working at jobs we despise and where success only breeds more work. Ironically, most work so that one day they don’t have to work anymore. When not laboring, the pack gathers at designated times and places, e.g., parties, meetings, to recite long worn out aphorisms, nod, agree, and seek approval and validation in t...

Fifteen months and fifteen days ago my life ended. Or, I thought it had. The woman I loved, Lorena Alcala, died of leukemia. It was only then that I understood Camus’ admonition: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering that fundamental question of philosophy.” I pondered that problem for months. I read innumerable books and articles on grief, all of which assured me that I was not insane to think about such things, but rather, normal, that grief is a “process” and that while I would never “move on,” I would, one day, learn to live again, that I would decide life is, indeed, worth living. Today is that day. Just as Lorena taught me what mature love means, the pain that has tracked me like a wounded animal since her death has taught me that life is worth living, that there are people who care that seem to come out of nowhere, people who have helped me selflessly along this mo...