God made the world. But we made our land.
—Old Dutch Saying
My mind wanders. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's also not something I can really stop, so I just deal with it. Like we deal with freckles I guess. Or maybe like we deal with the curves of our faces.
The other day, I heard about a dude who died in a car accident. He was killed by a drunk guy without a valid license. The kid was a pitcher, 22 years old and good at baseball. Perhaps soon to be really good, but we'll never truly know because like I said, dude died.
Nick Adenhart, Angels' pitcher, was killed by a car. Humans made those. The dude who killed him was drunk. Humans made alcohol. The circle of life is either a demonic mess because of or in spite of our tools. But no argument can be made that humans don't commit most of the incidental and accidental killing of humans.
We kinda suck like that.
And that got me thinking about how much of our existence is really ours. Like, what percentage of events happen because humans are involved and conversely, what percentage of events would happen if we were all frozen in place or stuck to a spot or collectively handcuffed to heavy stuff in confined places?
Exactly how much of this bullshit is our fault? And what are we supposed to change to improve life? ‘Cause to tell you the truth (usually, I lie here), I ain't too worried about free range chickens and the threat of global warming. I'm worried about the people and the threats they pose to themselves and to us. I'm worried about all the drugs they're prescribed as the number of killing sprees escalates, and all the drunk drivers who kill each other as the unemployment numbers increase, and those stupid fucking kids with no jobs, great drug connections and new guns… Basically, I'm dealing with a lot of shit that probably cannot and most likely will not be fixed.
And then my brain remembered this:
"Everybody serves a purpose," my Grandfather told me many times. "God has a plan and it's none of your business," he would always add.
And I had no idea why my brain was telling me two of Grandpa's old lines. Heck, I still don't even know what they mean or if they even mean anything.
But it helped me to think those words, kind of like it helps to think about being seduced mid-coitus (that's not just me… right?). I don't know why, but they work. Grandpa's words work.
Doesn't mean they're not bullshit, but so the hell what? If you're searching for something one hundred percent perfect and pure in this world, I got news for you, you're on the wrong planet.
And somehow this line of thought takes me back to an old anonymous saying: "Nobody's perfect. Well there was this one guy, but we killed him."
And that got me thinking about dying at the age of 22 because humans are humans and life can be a wicked comic-tragedy pretty much every freaking day.
And I wondered what purpose Nick Adenhart served by dying. And for a second, I imagined that Nick would have grown up old and spite-filled with no friends and no family to love him and maybe fate did him a favor or maybe the afterlife is seventeen kinds of orgasmic awesome or just, you know, basically any scenario that ccould make it funny or somewhat cool when someone young dies in an accident.
But that's all bullshit.
And then, because of who Nick was and what he did for a living, my mind drifted to baseball, my memory's senses pushed the smell of the grass and the feel of the leather and I remembered how I told myself, years ago as a teenager, that though most of the places in my world were bullshit and could fuck off and die (metaphorically speaking, of course), the baseball field—any baseball field—was different. The game was better than all of us, than all our petty disagreements, our credit scores and our jobs; the game was the closest thing I could find to perfect. And so the game got my respect.
And then I remembered that humans made the game.
And I smiled a little. And maybe Nick smiled too.
Hell, maybe the whole world smiled…