Member-only story
One In and One Out Has to Be Enough Today
One In and One Out Has to Be Enough Today
By Jane Tawel
December 18, 2019
There are days a person doesn’t feel like working. Or writing. There are days a person doesn’t even feel like being awake, or alive. There are not enough bullet points in the world, some days, to help me re-group, make plans, feel different, breathe deeply, or even care. If asked on some mornings to make a bucket list, there are some mornings I think I would just say, I am ready to kick the bucket, down the hall, out the door, and into outer space. And I’m not ready because I want to die, or I am at peace, although sometimes, I am ready to die without peace — it is just that depressing and bleak-feeling. I’m ready to kick the bucket lists, and dreams, and meaning out, because it all seems so meaningless and hopeless and pointless, and “Me-less”. Who am I in this whole mess that is Life? What difference does it possibly make that I just took another breath?
Someone said to me at a party yesterday, “Oh, I have never been a follower of any organized religion. That is why I became a Buddhist.” And of course, being the awkward, insecure, usually moronic-sounding-in-social-situations-person-I-am, I just politely smiled and nodded and did what all people at parties they don’t belong at do — I left my half-filled plastic container…