The other day, I gave some change to a homeless person, and then I met Jesus. After thanking the poor woman (indeed, I was the one to thank her) – I met the ultimate prophet. “We are all in peril,” he announced on the subway. “I am the new Jesus!” he proceeded. Couldn’t the two events be correlated? An act of selflessness, rapidly followed by the idea of ultimate salvation? In a city as dysfunctional as New York, couldn’t the purpose of the dysfunctionality itself be… the semblance of something functional? Would we ever appreciate light if darkness never existed? Does the purpose of darkness then become the reality of light?

            But is it still worth it? Jayce Dugard was held captive for 18 years… would she not have appreciated life, and freedom, had it not been for her captivity? Of course, the warmth of the sun, and the liberty to choose what to be in life, the mere liberty to be in life, are more tasteful once they’re taken away from you. But are we humans that utterly clueless? Could we really not appreciate anything unless it’s something that we might, one day, not have?

            We quasi-adults like to think of ourselves as retainers of a child’s spirit of freedom and powerfulness, yet capable of a more polished maturity than the one usually associated with adults. We are aware of how the world works, yet we are capable of changing it. Who are we kidding? We keep falling in love, associating the eventual heartache with “lessons learned, and mistakes that will never be repeated.” We fuck up at work, convincing ourselves that we are fighting for a new system, fighting for the next generation of undefeatable youth. We protest governments, yet dream of becoming part of that same organ. We spend hours dreaming big, and even more time doing nothing to realize those aspirations. Are these endless failures the only way to the eventual achievement of something? Do we keep fucking up so that we could then run out of possible ways to fuckup?