I feel like I know you Mr. Dylan. You are a master of english.

We Can Be Glad That We Don't Understand Her Allusions

"I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."

-Sharon Olds

Logic is my armor.

That’s not what I am looking for.

People seem to be happy with damndest things. They go through life going from job to job, starting at $7.25 an hour working to $350,000 annually. Even if it’s not all about income, then it’s about equally unsatisfying things. It’s about having a fashionable career, or an old house in a quiet neighborhood. It’s about having a marriage, even when all partners die. It’s about bodybuilding, or being emaciated enough to go to the beach. It’s about being the most involved in church, so that everyone can see how good you are. It’s about finding the right words to make any woman in the world melt. I’ve seen our entire species pursue things that aren’t worth as much as a well-stained wooden board because they will not one of them fulfill man’s purpose. I don’t want enough income to spend on a forty-thousand dollar SUV or porn or daycare so that I won’t ever have to see my kids. That won’t make me happy. I don’t want just a quiet life in a safe suburb fifteen minutes from the city with a backyard that I can lay in. Financial soundness and a backyard that I can sleep in and feel safe would be fantastic, but what happens when I leave it at dawn and go to a job that I despise with writhing passion? I don’t want to rot in alcoholism and lung cancer. Where is the happiness that these things bring? They will damn man and prevent him from performing his innate function.

I want to glorify my maker. I want to show off the artisanry of the master artisan, the adventurous spirit of the ultimate adventurer. I want to love like the creator of love. I want to drive down an unfamiliar street and look not with contempt upon the homeless, but instead see only opportunities to serve the weak. I want to love a companion, and everyday show her the love that God has placed in me for her. I want to educate all, not with a sense that I know more, but with a sense that the Teacher has entrusted me with an understanding of the things that shape our world to share with and enlighten others. I want not to impress my own will upon my miserable little life, but rather I want to act upon the Lord. I want to avoid silly religious clichés and glow with the genuine. I want to avoid my innate and almost overbearing cynicism and believe in the reality that God has promised me. I want to listen to Yusaf Islam and not judge his religious subscription, but glow with pride that God has blessed the world with his sounds. I want to write; but not for just the sake of stringing words together. I want to overcome my biological inhibition and express because with written words the free thought that Christ has blessed me with. I want to sit in a coffee shop and not judge the children, but revel in the fact that God has created joyous life in their noise. I want to live for my purpose; I want to bring glory to my Father. I don’t want to just live for the eternity that he has promised. Even if he hadn’t, I would still seek his interest. I don’t want a meaningless middle-class life. I want to subscribe to realism, and abandon pessimism. The glory of Jehovah is the only worthwhile reason to live. I don’t want the things that I am not looking for. I want this.

This makes our days bearable.

Oh, You.

What is it that we do to make our days bearable?

Do we fill the time with pointless things, like making cash and cutting grass? Cash only lasts for so many drinks, and the thing about grass is that it grows whether we cut it back or not. So pointless tasks of this or that really hold only immediate significance, as they must be repeated over and over to achieve even a little result. Do we embrace our vices, saying internally that “the end is really freaking nigh, and no one can give me a significant reason of why I should not seek happiness in pleasurable activity.” Problems result here as well, because no matter how much sex or how many cigarettes, none of these things bring true happiness. While they may help pass the time, and may make unbearable days even a little bit more exciting, when those activities end, the days become even less bearable than before. Even less bearable than before, with the added bonus of becoming an addict who cannot be happy with anything, not even his drug. Should we pour ourselves into thought and ponder of the deep abyss, of the philosophical subscriptions that perhaps are making us unhappy in the first place? No matter how much “enlightened” thought man may project, he cannot think himself past despair and into happiness. Solomon and I agree here; correct thought on the deplorable conditions surrounding our race and the destructive internal drive of man himself leads only to the conclusion that nothing is good, and that nothing can be happy. Trains of thought cannot make men or women happy.

So what then is it that we do to make our days bearable? Where is this fountain of youth, or joy, or whatever misnomer it goes by? Youth does not bring joy; no, youths want only to be older. Joy, where have you been?