Have you ever asked yourself, what's the point? I supposed we all have in our own way, but at what place do we agree to walk away from all possible answers? 

At what place do we determine the true weight of what that is, the point of all of this? Our name, our job, where we live, what car we drive, where we graduated from.

Our worth. Our life.

I'm down to the last few pages of Egger's A Hologram for the King  and I've found myself asking that question from the moment I picked up the book and read it's sleeve. 

A man whose life is crumbling financially takes a career leap of faith and gets sent into an economic city on the rise in hopes to hit it big and pay off those debts inherited inevitably on the path to the best possible existence, including paying for his daughter's college tuition. Instead what he finds among chaos and uncertainty in the desert is that his life has, in many way, surmounted to nothing. And that his actions had not provided for him the judge of character he'd hoped to be remembered by. 

It isn't a happy story, anyone could gather that. But I was curious. My father had gone into Iraq as a civilian contractor for a year for the very same reason. His debt outweighed his gain and with myself in her last year of college and my sister just beginning, money had to be made.

I cannot begin to understand the trials my father underwent in those 12 months. As all things military and overseas, nothing is run by the books. Daily schedules are determined by how to avoid imminent death, something no one under those circumstances can avoid, including my father. 

Sure he returned with the money he'd been promised, but at what cost? 

I guess the book was in some way a chance to see through the looking glass he refused to let me know was there at all, and in a way I had anticipated it as it was: cloudy and painful. 

As children we can never truly know what goes through our parents mind, partly because they try and spare us those grueling details that wrack their very flesh at times, and partly because in many ways we can never full understand their intention, even when we become parents ourselves. 

So again begs the question, what's the point? Why bother?

Why fall in love with someone who has repeatedly told you they cannot give you what you want? Why mother children that very well may turn their backs to you, and if not, must endure watching you fall apart before them in some unholy way? Why try and save future generations that will be wiped out regardless of the vaccines we find or our ability to turn the rising oceans into something worthy of our insatiable thirst? Why write? Why run? 

Why try?

Maybe I've missed something along the way. Maybe the point is that there is no point, and that the beauty simply lies in existing: Breathing. Looking. Touching. Tasting. Smelling.

Listening. Always listening. 

Seeing the forest for the trees. 

Always giving the pedestrian the right of way. 

Taking a long drink after attempting to keep up with a 6-year-old on the monkey bars scorching hot from the noon sun. 

Lingering in the rain just to think you can in that moment feel your skin. 

Thinking, maybe, you still have a chance to be an astronaut. 

Telling someone you love them regardless of what the outcome will be. 

Knowing that in some way, your story is worth being told.

That what you do has some impact, forever. 

I want to find relief in knowing that I am not the only one who questions her place among us 7 billion. That maybe, within reason, I will be capable of accomplishing something that will out weight the notion that this is all for nothing. 

That we are more than fleeting bulbs of existence, flashing out with a subdued pop when our filaments have had their fill of this place.

I won't want to go until I first know someone read a book beneath my light that made them, if only for briefly, feel content. 

You see, because as much as I don't know what the point is, I also don't know if I've made a point either. 

Alone, I wonder if I, too, am an Alan. Finding that my meaning has become obscured and calls for an excavation. That mine is a meaning elusive like a steam of water hundreds of feet below the surface and that calls for a bucket to be dropped to its placid waves so that I may drink and remember. 

To taste it would mean to remember, and how I want nothing more than to remember. 

But standing at the edge of the opening, bucket in hand, the last of the day's light bounding over my shoulder in an act of defiance, I find that my rope won't reach. So instead the bucket's uneven bottom skims the water's lips, throwing it into far reaching ripples that carry for a moment before disappearing all together. 

Mrs Jynx - My Friend T3 (Remix Of Resynthesize)

And I, I feel so alive....

When I first started this journey, I never thought I would've reached this point: 200 miles.

But a couple of runs a week, turned into running every morning before work.

What took me 45 minutes to do then takes me 20 now. It isn't easier, I've become stronger, more in tune with my body than previously before.

I've started to train my mind to disregard the pain in my legs, the throbbing in my lower back, the cuts in between each toe threatening to open up and ruin yet another pair of socks. Two deep inhales in, two sharp breaths out. 

Hips square, land in the middle of the foot, rotate at the core, use your arms for momentum. Eyes forward. Listen to your heart.

Push. Push. Push.

I run for the release. I run for the thrill. I run for the challenge. I run for the peace. I run to stay fit. I run to feel alive.

I run because above all else, I am a runner. 

What dreams may come

There is a painting

Of yours above my bed.

I come home to you.

Here, I rest my head

In the silence of those hills.

So vast and light blue.

And that only you

Could capture in endless grace.

A crafted compass

That forever will

Lead me toward a time when

My love held some worth.

Derrick Brown - A Finger, Two Dots, then Me

Tribute.

I remember when I was in college, a professor once told me that things don't get easier as you get older. 

My mother tells me often that life isn't about the black and white, but instead about the (often times what feels like an infinite amount) shades of grey.

And so how am I here? At this intersection of having had made a decision I know was right but still difficult and so therefore doesn't feel all that right after all....

I wish sometimes I could look back at when I was 6-years-old and recall how it was I see adults. I wonder if I imagined myself at 25. I wonder if I fulfilled any of those silly dreams I had drawn within myself. I wonder if I'm a quarter of the woman I had hoped to become.

There are times in my day that I feel invincible. Untouchable. Perfect in my imperfection.

And then there are times that to simply exist as I am now seems impossible, as if the universe is poised and ready to tear me apart down to the very last molecule and the only peace I find is reverting back to a time when there was no church or God or political debates 

but rather concrete truths:

The soft folds of my fathers hands on the back of my neck as he carried me to bed.

Taking refuge in a laundry basket full of freshly washed towels still warm out of the dryer.

Swimming the length of our pool on a single breath.

A first snow. A first rain.

Crying into the tail of my mother's dress because she didn't have a napkin.

I wish I could go back and try again, make things right. Make myself better. But time is lost on me and instead I grasp those images as though my life depended on them.

Somehow it always will be.