Farah, Michael And Endings

It is Friday. I had a wonderful evening with my best friend and cousins playing cards and laughing at everything and nothing. Slept at 4 in the morning and woke up still feeling happy from a great relaxed night where the only thing you have to do is be yourself, and of course pay attention to what card was played.

I woke up to the news of Michael Jackson’s death! How could he ? He was supposed to start a series of concerts next month. I was never really a big fan. I mean I liked him and more importantly respected his art and his passion, but was never one of those die hard religious followers. Still I was really sad. In a weird way, in moments of death, we always feel that we liked the deceased more than we actually did.

In the middle of watching the coverage a little, quick piece of news is presented that Farah Fawcett also died. Now that made me sadder, I was in love with the “angel”, and I wondered, is it just feeling sad for people we got used to seeing and liking and admiring or is it feeling sad for a period of our lives that has died with them? Is it the fact that people who were ever present in our lives while growing up and imprinted on our childhood memory screen have passed on, or is it fear of facing the fact that life is finite and really does end. Why are we always shocked when someone famous passes away? Does glamour blind us to the fact that even famous, glamorous celebrities have to face the same fate that awaits us all? Is it that in our deliriousness and intoxication on daily life we forget that there is an ending? What if we held that thought and lived with that notion that it really is short and needs to be fulfilling, and more importantly HAPPY. What if we believed that regardless of what you do in life and regardless of how many millions adore you, at the end it is a simple failure of the heart and the same ambulance, the same ER and the same morgue, the same knives for performing an autopsy and the same ground that will embrace our bodies.

I will think of my card game again. And, since it ends the same way for all of us, I might as well enjoy the moments I am given and the memories of the ones I was blessed with.

Michael, Farah may you both RIP

One Layer At A Time

Ok, I have been complaining a lot lately. No, A LOT. She called me today and specifically told me to chill. She repeated a few sentences I have been using a lot lately and the terminology sounded oddly familiar. “This is the worst time of my life”, “this is the worst month of my life”, “it is so bad I sometimes cannot breathe”. Hearing my own words was a literal slap. I almost felt the pain on my face. Is this what I have become? Is this who I am? Is this who I want to be?

For someone who used to be the beacon of happiness in any group (or so they say) it is tough to hear that you have become the grumpy one, that you have become one of the people YOU used to complain about and make fun of. Was I wrong? Was I miscalculating the future, unknowingly mocking my future self? What the hell happened? When did the shift take place?

As my friend said it could not have been all rosy, it could not have been all perfect. So if imperfections are always there do we deduct that the shift happens within us? Have the imperfections increased but I have not changed exponentially with them? Was I left behind when growth, maturity and wisdom grew and moved along? Am I making up my new circumstances? Am I making them worse than they are by breathing more life and health into them? Will it ever be perfect? Will it ever be the way we want it to be? Is it even perfect when it is the way we want it to be? The question that now presents itself is what do we really want it to be like? Do we know or do we make it up as we go? Is what I want today the same as what I want tomorrow? WOW, that left me breathless!

Yes, confusing. I know. I envy me 5 years ago, with all of my now 5 year old imperfections, they now seem so small and irrelevant. I thought we shed things and become lighter as we go, apparently I have at one point decided to maintain my layers of skins and become heavier. So today I take the decision to shed my layers one at a time. I know I will sometimes have to use a scalpel to do that but I will.

So, hello to my one less layer new self.

Photo from ehow

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