I once read that when we hit sixty, we begin to come to terms with who we are and start winding down and preparing for our eventual demise, which can come within ten years or so.
I don't know about you, but in my case, I have become very restless---intellectually, physically, and emotionally---ever since the big Six O hit me over the head.
I read voraciously and start forming theories. Things click. I fancy that I am a philosopher and a thinker and a late blood mer. I see interconnections in just almost everything. I start learning foreign languages (5) with a vengeance. I become arrogant and insufferable. I see most people I interact with as cheap, stingy fools and scheming liars.
Physically, I feel a surge of energy. I do cardiovascular exercises. I lift weight. I swim. I do shadow boxing. I fantasize to commit acts of violence against certain motherfuckers. I make friends with gang bangers and cheap hired killers. I do pit and occasionally meth. I put my life in danger.
One thing I have come to realize is that I respect and treasure facts and truths more than all the scumbags and motherfuckers I've run into, put together. To me, these assholes have no intellectual and emotional courage. That's why they have stayed stupid and ignorant. All they have are ready-made defensiveness and cheap, scheming lies. To me, they are not even human; they are garbage, trash, rubbish, deserving to be rounded up and thrown into an industrial-sized oven and burned as fuel. My contempt for them is boundless and immense. I feel good in dehumanizing them, in my restless mind, of course. They are lucky I don't have any political power. Now I know what lurks in the minds of Hitler and his followers, Pol Pot and the deranged Maoist Khmer Rouge peasant fighters, ISIS jihadist motherfuckers, and Trump's uneducated, poor, working class white trash supporters who have screamed bloody murder in those raucous, hate-filled so-called political rallies.
Meanwhile I stop believing in Love, not long after I stopped believing in Sex. Kind of weird for a guy who boasted of having women flocking to him like bees to honey. Sex to me was over-rated. It was tiring, messy, sweating, and time-consuming, especially with women for whom I had no romantic feelings. There were small talks to be made after the act when all I wanted was for them to shut up and for me to roll over and sleep in order to recharge my battery. I guessed I was not a sensitive guy after all, despite protestations to the contrary. Anyway, Love, to me, like sex, is also over-rated. You spent all that time and energy and money finding the one whom you supposed to love and who supposed to love you, but it turned out nobody loved anybody. We all only loved ourselves, using the Other as a tool.
I'm exploring the edges of humanity and borders of sanity. I feel rich, strong, independent, and fearless. Listening to smooth, romantic, beautiful Mexican ballads on Pandora helps calm my nerves which are burdened with a nagging concern that perhaps I must get out of the stock market and liquidate all my holdings. I don't want to be half-broke again like I was in 2008. The world does not look too bright right now. Chaos, wars, and disasters are looming in the horizon. Complacency and passivity are gateways to financial ruin.
All my life, I've lived life dangerously: physically, academically, financially, and emotionally. I've done so in order to understand who I am and what I am made of. With each passing day, I appreciate the genius of Sigmund Freud for highlighting the dual nature of Man: Life Force and Death Instinct or Survival and Self-Destruction. I feel a more complex a human, the more paradoxical his existence is.
A gun does not know why it goes off and then somebody dies. A crystalline, shining, flashing instant when one decision, the pulling of a trigger, sets off a chain of events that forever change a life, maybe two; one for the shooter, the other for the "shootee". After months of deliberations in my mind, the insolent, stupid motherfucker is now lying dead in front of me. What am I supposed to do next?
(To be continued)
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