Hell, whatever!

Sometimes life just lives itself. The day flows over you without any volition on your part and at night you wonder, the day just went by and I did not even live it. Things happen, you respond and the time ticks on dutifully. Then somewhere you begin to wonder if the struggle to get here had been worth it.

Ever so often you stand apart and look at yourselves walking through the corridors of life hanging a plastic smile on your plastic face, your plastic head nodding a plastic nod at other plastic faces that pass by. To some you just give a smile, to others a clipped "Hi" and a pearly white grin. To someone a little more familiar, you say "Hi, how are you?" and walk away without waiting for the response. With ones who really matter, you have "Hi How are you?" and the "Gooooooood!" followed by an equally inane conversation.

You do it all so well; with so much well rehearsed polish. But, still, sometimes it gets on your nerves and you begin to yearn for a modicum of Genuineness - just "being" rather than "pretending". Instead of looking for it within, you look around. You do find it in fact as you look for it some more. It thrives somewhere in the nooks and crannies of life - in the corner cube of a forgotten developer who quietly types away perfect code, in the shy, diffident smile of a hardworking newcomer, in the pair of young lovers who surreptitiously slip away to snatch a quiet moment, in a rogue plant flowering in the midst of the well manicured lawn. And suddenly you feel hollow inside. It feels like the urge to "get there" is coring the insides of you.

You live through day with the pit in your stomach, that little gnawing feeling in the heart. When the day is done, the pensive evening waits for you outside. As you drive home, slowly, quietly, your mind wandering far away from yourselves, the bower of the ruddy sky engulfs you and you feel a nameless ache for a land faraway.

You park the car and get into your house, breathing in the fragrance of flowers that blossom in your front yard but don't stop to admire them. On the way you check your motley bunch of mails and the mortgage bill touts itself from within it to draw your attention. That's when you remember the not-so- fat-but-fat-enough-to-get-you-by paycheck and a smug smile appears on your lips. You shrug your shoulders and say to yourselves "Hell, whatever!"