Abused By Illusions

In those days nothing quite seemed to work. It was as though I had made my lifes vocation and it was screwing up. Everything in those days seemed out of whack and I often wondered if my middle name had become off kilter. In those days the past seemed broken, the present majorly depressing, and the future didn't seem at all as bright as it once had. All those people that proclaimed from the roof tops to be my friends were in those days no where to be found.

They made a few token efforts but in those days there were a thousand other things that required their immediate attention. I sat alone in those days and often wondered how my universe had become so skewed. In those days I spent hours looking for who had caused my lonely predicament. I often counted miseries in those days to wile away hours when I had nothing better to do. I developed little mental games in those days to play just by myself.

I got lots of intense thinking done in those days. Many self discoveries in those days came to me like pouring rain. I heard voices in the wind and found secrets in the clouds that I have never seen since those days. Those days seem like long ago now but in my heart I know they were only yesterday and are likely to come again often in my life. As one gets older it seems that they more and more find themselves stuck off and on in those days.

I got a call the other day from a friend that had been absent back in those days. It seems she now found herself right in the middle of those days. It made me think back on those days and wonder where so many had been back then. I spent hours that day talking to her and tried to do my best to get her through those days. We talked about my experiences back in those days and how I had coped. We made plans to meet when she got through those days.

My promises in those days to her were ones that I meant to keep. But as so often happened in those days we never seemed to get together. Days, weeks, and finally years past in those days and we never did get to meet. I heard the other day that she had passed away. I shed some tears thinking about those days. Her sister was in from somewhere down south and after the funeral we spent hours talking about those days.

It all made me think how today can so quickly become those days. How sometimes time can get away and before you know it anytime can become those days. So I sat down today while thinking of those days and wrote this out for you all to see. I just hope my words find you before today drifts away like the retreating tide and becomes those days. Before you know it, today and even tomorrow will have become those days. So while your thinking about those days give someone a call or write them an email. It may just make you keep from having regrets about what you didn't do back in those days.

We enter ths world so very sweet and innocent. Till early on they educate us in an opposing philosophy. It's sophistry teaching us that the worlds just not that way. We are taught to transform from being a happy smiling child into a new creature full of fear and doubt. We are taught from our earliest years that it is best to regurgitate someone else's answer instead of seeking and finding our own. Through slight of hand they teach us early on to play for the audience and in doing so we lose our self trying ever harder to play the part for which they have prepared us.

We learn a lesson so wrong that it becomes the world's collective hurt. Changing masks to suit each new audience we slowly allow the sweet child to fade away. She is hidden by the sometimes grand and sometimes mundane parts we are taught to play. No longer does she remember who she was meant to be.

Time to time she tries to slip her mask down to show someone who it was she was meant to be. The great actors of the world can't take it for they have all been taught to always play their part. For no one is allowed to be who they were meant to be. Everyone is miserable and we should want to be just as they.

It's all like some Mephistos play. The Kingdom of God swirls all around them and within them. Yet with eyes to see and ears to hear they adamantly refuse to see or hear it's arrival. For the play connects them to this world while the Kingdom shines a light upon their collective fall from the grace of the God that they mock.

We're all taught to trade our ivory robes for crimson rags. For crimson rags are the worlds costume of choice. A garment designed to hide their nakedness but that allows their abject hypocrisy to shine through like the light of this world that it has become. We run faster and faster chasing after what the world has tried so hard to teach us is true hapiness. While deep down we have known all along that we were born with the only true happiness that we can ever have. We know that the only thing standing in the way of that happiness is the part that they have tried so hard to teach us to play. But, like it always has, the world stands ever ready to protect the play through hate, strife, and war if need be.

"You can't be happy it would ruin our play!" they scream. We're so happy being unhappy why can't you just be content to be just like us? Get yourself some religion so you can blame lucifer for your unhappiness or get yourself some politics so you can blame the other party. Just don't ever interfere with our play! We have way to much invested in this play for mere individuals to question it.

Today, though, I choose to quit the play. I've decided not to be a good sport for even one more day. I cast my crimson rags into the fire and hope for an ivory robe one day. I shall for now revel in my nakedness. Today you see I have decided to just be me and let the pieces fall where they may. I vow to help others who wish to quit the play and just be themselves. I wish no ill will toward those whom have decided that they can't live without the play.

I'm just forced at this juncture in my life to quit the play!