Control: Sad Reality of Life…
I, Dalton Lewis, know that there are many wonderful things in life. Rainbows! Movies! Television! Sushi! Burgers! Burritos! Steak! Chicken! All of these are wonderful things. Romance. Romance is amazing and can change one’s life, can energize the soul. Walks! Taking a good walk can energize a body and help a mind get through the day.
But…
Life is terrible. That is the sad reality of life.
You will die.
At the end of your life your body will fail and you will die before you want to die. You will collapse and your heart will stop pumping blood to your brain and you will die. Your friends and family will die, too. You will live to see some of them die. The rest of them will watch you die.
My life hasn’t been perfect. I have thousands of downloads of my novels, sure, but I’m not selling millions of copies. I don’t live in a mansion. I don’t have a manservant to work for me, driving me around and buying me bananas. My novels haven’t been turned into hit television shows or blockbuster movies.
And then there’s the fact that I’m crazy. I have a terrible, debilitating mental illness which cripples my ability to function in the real world and makes it almost impossible to work. It also makes it harder to lose weight. At this point I’m too fat for an industrial job.
I can’t date a beautiful woman. I don’t have the successful career, the skinny body, the youth, or the self-confidence necessary to date someone young and pretty. I don’t particularly want to anymore, but it would be nice to have as an option.
I’m not the only one who suffers. Elementary school kids get shot in their classroom. A man barricades himself in an elementary school classroom and kills kids who don’t have a chance at a full, adult life. The killer? An eighteen-year-old who knows nothing about life and has barely lived.
Drugs. Drugs destroy lives. Millions of Americans are addicted to terrible substances that destroy their minds and bodies, make them poor, make them homeless, kill them, ruin their relationships with friends and families. People make millions selling these drugs to people.
Alcohol. It’s legal, folks, and it destroys your mind and body. It’s legal but it’s terrible for you. It’s a menace.
Car accidents. They wreck cars and cost people thousands of dollars. They break bones. They broke my knee. I can hardly run and walk with a limp unless I wear a knee brace. Car accidents wreck lives.
Work success. Only two percent or so make it by becoming the top people in their profession. The rest of us sit in the middle, being mild successes and not becoming world famous. I may move people with my words, but I won’t challenge Shakespeare. He isn’t scared of me catching him. I can’t think of any writer in this generation who Shakespeare is scared of. Maybe he was a little worried about Toni Morrison, but she’s dead. He has nothing to worry about anymore.
Good people don’t always get rewarded, and bad people don’t always get punished. Good deeds don’t always result in someone getting a better life. That’s a myth. Some people brutally sell everything to get ahead — and then they get ahead. Some people know how to game the system — they get ahead. Some people don’t know how to navigate the work world — and they end up bagging groceries. I bagged groceries in my thirties. It happens to people.
Food. Food, however delicious it is, will make you fat if you eat too much of it. You will slow down, become bloated, and have a host of physical and mental problems because of your weight. Americans eat too much sugar and that sugar is killing us. I’m almost 300 pounds now. That’s terrible and sad.
In summary — you will fail at some things and die. You won’t accomplish everything you wanted to accomplish in life. You will die. You will lose all your loved ones. You will end up a corpse. Sorry, folks. That’s just the truth.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
