God Put A Smile Upon Your Face

Sometimes, I envy the believers. In my weaker moments, I wish I could walk through life knowing that the world, fate, God was speaking to me. I turn my Ipod to shuffle and ask the oracle a question. The synchronicity of hearing the name on a television show the exact moment I was thinking about someone with the same name is a message fraught with meaning and depth.

If the randomness was not just a signal to noise, then there must be some implicit order. The sacrifices, the heartache, the frustration, bad things through no fault of your own, the casual cruelty, all this you can bear knowing that it is all leading you closer to that brightness just over the horizon if only you can keep going. All the kindness and the love that you gave (and that was thrown away) will be rewarded.

Faith becomes a warm blanket and a fire in a cold twilight.

But I think too much. If the world were really so ordered, if karma was really so swift, then the implications are untenable. The piss-soaked bum mumbling to himself, his face caked in grime, well, I don't know if he deserves to be where he is. I doubt every single piss-soaked bum were each child molesting tax cheats who kicked puppies on the way to the whorehouse. And you can't tell me trust fund babies engaged heroics straight out of the womb to deserve their money.

So as much as I want to believe in destiny, as much as I want to be a believer, I just can't. It would make my life easier to believe that, after what I've gone through, life will reward me with something wonderful if I can just hold on. But if I believe in that, then the rest of the world will truly be a drab, shitty, predestined purgatory. Better to believe there is no set path, that there is no justice other than the one we make for ourselves. And that means there are no paths, only horizons.