Post #23: Regaining Passion

"Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gosh, I've been reading a whole bunch of stuff I wrote back in high school and college, and I can't believe how passionate I was. I still think I am, but then I read that stuff. It inspires me. Past me actually inspires present me. It's really all ridiculous considering the main thing I want to do in life is inspire others to action, yet I never know what action I need to take in order to do that. Then I read things I wrote years ago and feel inspired by my own words. That's either twisted or narcissistic or awesome, and I haven't figured out which yet.

So here it is:

How It Ends

I'm listening to that song. It's my new obsession. It's so damn inspirational. I can't explain it really. It's kind of comforting in a way. It just repeats, "You already know, yes, you already know how this will end." It's eerie. Then it plays this music that makes you see a montage of future you and all of your accomplishments. It shows you fighting for causes and pushing your kids on swings and grabbing your wife and laying a big, fat kiss square on her lips. It shows you squeezing her hand tightly as she gives birth to your first-born and your son rounding the bases at his high school baseball game and you reading the eulogy at your mother's funeral. It shows you tossing hamburgers on the grill at a family reunion barbecue and the time you won that huge courtcase and were bombarded with reporters on the steps of city hall and your wife turning to face you in the street on a rainy night as she's attempting to catch a cab after a fight and you grab her by the wrist just before she steps into one and hold her in your arms so that she knows how sorry you are for letting your career get the best of you. And then you see your daughter graduating from high school and looking over at you with a wink during the ceremony and your whole family running down the street after your dog because he got out for the fiftieth time and you proposed a group effort to recapture him and you patting your son on the shoulder to let him know that it's okay to not always be the winner. And then there are these clips of you crying uncontrollably in your car on some country road that you drove out to when you thought you had just about lost it to your mid-life crisis and then, for good measure, it skips to these wonderful bouts of laughter that your whole family took part in after some huge fight that you all realized was ridiculous right in the middle of it. Then it shows your daughter dancing in some recital when she was eight years old and still concerned with what her hair looked like in a bun and it flips to your wife helping your daughter get in her costume and then shows this extended look she gives you with all this love in it as if to say, "Damn, we're really doing alright. Who knew?" And then the music fades as the camera zooms in on your eyes. And then the image fades into the clouds. Because you already know how this will end.