The pressure is intense, unbearable, stifling any movement or freedom that might relieve it. And by any other measure – intelligence, perspicacity, skill, love – Life is light, airy, and entertaining.
You lived a normal middle-class childhood, with no wants, summers on the Cape, a shiny red bicycle with a banana seat, parents who loved you and smothered you with stimulating books and a healthy dose of good morals, yet, through the ease with which they did everything, failed to show you that they, too, felt the pressure, the daily concern that at any point it could all unravel like one insane Ponzi scheme, all triggered by something that just stopped being part of the equation.
When you’re expected to stand on your own Two, dumped onto society with bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enthusiasm and a wad of moolah from the ‘rents, Real Life (a misnomer, as if the previous years, filled with scrapes and bruises both internal and external, were no less real) hits you in the face, coldly asphyxiating you like a swan dive into a hole in a lake in Lapland in February, a nausea growing as you realize that, while you survived the entry and not splattered your expensively fed grey matter on the ice, you have no idea if you’ll find the hole when you come up gasping for air.
And, as your Life builds a head of steam – job, girlfriend, wife, job, dog, house, job, kid, dog, kid, job, cat, job, cat – you dig deeper the gravity well of Living and you head into zones of greater pressure, pressure from dependents, from schedules, from aspirations, from payments sustaining the accouterments of the circles you move in, everything a bit beyond you, like that wee wafer, just so rich, boom.
And things get ahead of you, with actions preceding revenue, robbing Peter to pay Paul, who eventually has to pay Simon, and Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, all the way to the Piper, who stands arms crossed, foot tapping, knowing that he’s really collecting from you. And you keep that going – Peter to Paul et al, Peter to Paul et al – such that it defines the scope of all you do, slowly eroding open paths you could have easily taken were it not for the pressure to pay the Thirteen plus the Piper.
The miracle that needs to happen is no longer a lottery score, long discounted as a final remedy, but to surgically uncouple the financial diarrhea from your happiness, your love, your moral, your attitude, else it crushes all you love and live for in an implosion of despair like a diver down deep in a trench, where a simple window crack spells a watery doom, but who is still able to marvel at the accomplishments and be part of the magic of the surroundings, so, too, must we scramble to deal with the pressure, yet know that our family, our wonder, our self-worth shall be whole and endure.
– 08may10
