Saints

Sometimes I wonder. Well, not sometimes, oftentimes I wonder. Everything is so snarled up and tightly wound in life. Everything needs to be simpler. Why must there be a system to prevent you from getting what you want without effort? Why cannot all things be readily and easily available? Why must things, even when achieved, only be enjoyed conditionally? Fine foods cannot be consumed for fear of high cholesterol, fine spirits cannot be imbibed for fear of liver cirrhosis, love cannot be pursued without consideration of consequences.

Love, a very interesting thing. As I grow older, love becomes an all-consuming passion for people. Everything is about finding romance. A man cannot maintain a close platonic friendship with a woman without inviting speculation of his intent romantically. Why should this be? The furore over gay marriage revolves around one basic fact, that these couples are obsessed with finding recognition of their love. After all, who cares about marriage if the love is genuine? But people do care. Marriage is a mark, a way of defining the other as a piece of one's own social property. No other can possess the other as I do. To even define someone else as a romantic partner is an exclusive relationship. A girl with a boyfriend is off-limits to other guys, unless she is separated from that boyfriend.

Ah, the complications of everything. Why should one not simply express everything in the heart without fear of consequence? Is pursuit of an ideal with no regard of failure or external opinion such a terrible thing? Why should people not seek out what they desire and attempt to obtain it without having to fear the fallout? If you love, speak it and let the other decide. If you desire freedom, cry for it, and hope it is heeded. If you crave fame, become famous, half-assed as it may be, and be damned with the condemnations of the world.

Thoreau said it so brilliantly, 'Our life is frittered away by detail ... Simplify, simplify'

All things should be direct and simple. But they cannot be. That is the curse of society. That is the curse of existing in close association with other thinking beings. It is so exhausting to constantly maintain the facades and deceptions that are necessary to life. Yet the exhaustion cannot be resolved or waved away, cannot be dismissed by mere rest. The pain and contradictions of life will ever torment us all, for the only ones who do break free are those considered mad, and who admits to madness? No wonder insanity was once considered the mark of saintliness.

When then, can I achieve sainthood?