Its Friday, July 29th, 2022. I’m a little sad. I’m worn out from a week’s worth of fighting with myself, a week’s worth of attempting to marshall myself to get meaningful work done, a week’s worth of small victories and defeats, a week’s worth of good days and bad days, a week’s worth of reaching out to friends over text, and most of us being too busy or tired from work to respond to each other. I’m worn out from working out hard, and winning and losing at diet. I’m worn out from having more to do, and accomplish than I could ever reasonably accomplish in one lifetime. Why do I need to accomplish so much? Well I have to become a sterling bright and beautiful bird, right? How else will the girls know that I’m that i’m the one for them.

Yeah, well, I am married. So, why am I doing all this again? Oh yeah, I’m gonna die one day, I have to do something meaningful with my life. And why is it meaningful to toil away on becoming a better me? A better me for who? Isn’t that point of the human struggle? The power of the individual is that by rising above they help the community. The indivudual strives for the community. Where is my community? Where are the human connections? Maybe this is real death of god - when we lose all context for meaning making…our social connections.

We are a social animal that is sensitively tuned to social reality. This is how your son or daughter is constantly talking in a language you don’t understand, because they have a world that you don’t inhabit. It was constructed out of thin air. It is a social reality whose fabric is just rules, and different cultural information. So what happens when we lose the ability to play our game - the one that our parents didn’t know how to play? What happens when we lose the people we played with? Slowly our social bonds disintegrate as we are worked to the bone, the context for meaning making erodes, and we become a husk that has forgotten the purpose of humanity - to be together. Then, we turn dark. We become suspicious of everything. We hate everything. We hate the outsider. We hate the gays and trans folk. We hate the immigrant. We hate the people that threaten our lives. Because despite the fact that we hate our isolation we still have fight in us, we don’t want to die, and we are still worried someone might take the things we care about the most from us. Its too late. We already lost it. It wasn’t the immigrants or trans people who took it. We lost community.

Well, I refuse to become cynical. I’m not giving up on people, or myself. I will simply acknowledge that the society I live in undermines itself. Its great hero - the individual - is its great sacrifice. Community is something we can get back. Its a reorientation of purpose. I choose to try to live in service of others this day. This is why we play. We play for each other. We can never forget. I can never forget. When I do, I despair. We can do this. Have a good day! Happy Friday!