Two Steps to the Right of What’s Left of God

 I have always made a point of waiting until it is necessary. To allow things to tick away until they sit me down, much like how I am sitting now. After an uncertain amount of time, thoughts will refuse to exist as thoughts. I was weary about writing anything so close to the new year for fear of ending up with one of those dreadful 'seminal' lumps of prose. As luck shouldn't have it, in four more days, I will have been alive for four decades, so I figured I am obligated to loosely attempt to sum up what I make of that. Or perhaps, more to the point, what it makes of me.

There are things about me that surprise me. They are most unlike who I have once been, and who many might know me as. I am wearing a wedding ring on my left ring finger. Three evenings ago I touched my last drop of alcohol, and in the next few hours, I will smoke my last cigarette. I never had a timeline in mind for marriage, but shortly after I met my wife I realised that I was at a point where I could truly be with someone; to hold them close -hopefully safe- as the earth fell apart. As for the smoking and drinking... These are things that I can find no reason for carrying them into the remaining years. One is a symptom of weakness and the other is a tie to it.

If I were to offer one piece of advice here, it would be to stay well away from anyone who drinks regularly. They are not necessarily bad people, but you have to understand how it separates the individual from who they might be. It waters the ego so that its root may spread throughout the rest of your character. It is pain relief. An antacid for discomfort at the price of individual growth. It provides you the means to be a stranger to yourself while imagining you have a friend. My life has always been closely tied to alcohol. I have stepped away and returned numerous times. This time I have been lucky enough to finally understand who I am in that inebriated state, and who I am trying to avoid being. With no fear of offending anyone at this moment in my life, I confidently say that everyone who drinks regularly is emotionally stunted, and almost always unaware. That is the danger of inebriation, and its prolonged hangover; you are unaware of the reality in which you flounder, so you cannot find any meaningful direction through life. You stagger two steps to the right of it, forever oblivious as to where you should be placing your feet. It is easy enough to be like this without the help of the inebriation that alcohol provides, with it, it is certain

... 

God feels closer than ever. It is still very cryptic to me. The one thing that I am certain of is that those who claim to belong to any religious order are further away from God than the atheists. Those who have interpreted literature to create strict and not-so-strict laws of being, and done so en masse, are an embarrassment to the idea that there might be a holy deity that is somehow linked to every individual past, present, and future. The fact that this could be seen as offensive is testament to that. I don't think that anyone truly finds God in their lifetime. I think that there might be moments when their being correlates to his, and I think the more of these the better. But it seems foolish that any number of sheep, chanting shared ideas could imagine themselves to be holy in the eyes of God, let alone be his children. The texts are entirely metaphorical, there are no true children of God, just a writhing mass failing to understand this. And in doing so they tear the world apart with the ignorance of escapism and unrelenting malfeasance. Those who scream the name of God stand in unison with the Devil. 

That is finally off my chest. I have been coughing bits of it up, here and there. The crimes that have been committed against kindness at the hands of belief. The religionists are disturbed fools. Unwilling to think. Proud. No different from a man chanting the name of his football team in the safety of his fellow supporters. The religionists are not individuals, and nothing could be further away from God. God is a personal relationship between one person and themselves. It is synonymous with Jung's individuation and Buddhism's enlightenment. To assume that one can march to the beat of a drum that doesn't come from within oneself shows only that one hasn't even begun to have a relationship with God.   

So, with a clear chest, I think I will go and smoke that final cigarette. I feel as if I am doing my last turn away from much of the world. It no longer resonates with me. If anything, it prods and pinches, too soft to form a fist, too unintelligent to speak coherently. Genuinely, I wish it well, but the more I move around it, the less I am able to find. This feeling of emptiness has been too frequent. Too prolific. There are plenty of other places to find meaning, away from these things that have the audacity to call themselves human despite never giving it a thought as to what that might entail.