Here it comes, another lonely day, playing the game. I’ll sail away on a voyage of no return to see if eternal life is meant to be and if I find the key to the eternal dream…

I could find hundreds of lyrics and quotes to express my feelings and still it would only scratch the surface. I feel at times to be buried so deeply that there no surface through which to break – Or, it is there, but covered with a thick layer of ice – allowing glimpses of a sanctuary, all the while keeping it well out of my grasp.

I wonder what type of universe allows creatures such a me in it. I wonder what part in the grand design I play – the ‘reason’ for my being at all – especially as it is. Surely I could have served a more useful purpose were I better designed! But being as I am, I’m given pause by how ill-conceived a being I actually am, and how ultimately pointless my existence actually is.

It’s dark and raining as I drive down the parkway (old joke: why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?) I close my eyes, and I think how easy this will be: no one will question the outcome. Save for a few months of sadness, I’ll scarcely be missed. On-line, I’ll be one name less – at home, one bother less.

Right now, the things in my life over which I have control – or feel I have control, are few if any. My ‘career’ – if one can call it that, is at the whim of Wall Street and a bad job market (for those who did not know, I worked for that bankrupt bank) – and my relationship with my wife rests on a solid foundation of mud. This has, to some extent, relegated other considerations in my life to a secondary status: the joke being that they have never been primary in the first place. Fodder for another day’s whinge.

I push down with my right foot. A sense of empowerment begins to full me: truly, something over which I have some control. The engine winds up and I think back to twenty six years ago – the year I graduated high school and that summer. I reasoned then that as a solution, this was not the best: it lacks assurances – and how I so desperately wanted assurances then as I do now. I recognize this for what it is (as well as for what it isn’t) and I open my eyes…

It’s dark and raining as I drive down the parkway. Earlier than usual today, the road is empty and I’ve managed to ‘drift’ over one lane – just before my exit. I take it, make my way to the parking lot and board my train – as I have done so many times before. As sit down and look around at unfamiliar faces and wonder if they are in any better control of their lives than am I.

A woman a few seat forward looks up and we exchange smiles. I think for just a moment about her drive to the train on a dark rainy morning. The doors close, we depart the station.