One-size Theme Fits All

When you are pressed, by yourself or others, to deliver a personal philosophy, a definition of story, the major thematic ingredient of drama, or a description of the Human Condition, the chances are overwhelming  that your answer will be: "Nothing is what it seems."

You continue, whether the presser is you or someone or some ones, with the observation of how this answer affirms and ratifies your positive nature on the basis of how frequently you are surprised by discoveries of things you had missed as you were coming along from youth to maturity to middle age to whatever you may be at the moment.  

For a time in those teen-to-early twenties years, you were thought bright and precocious, which is always dangerous because the inevitable follow-up of that is being thought an asshole. Let the record show you set forth with great vigor to fulfill that prognosis. 

Whatever you are thought of by others now, you take refuge in being a late bloomer, which is to affirm your belief that, however you are seen now, you still have some potential for understanding one or two of the greater mysteries of life.

From among these mysteries, one--irony--erupts and splatters about you like a bottle of ketchup that had delivered more of its contents than you'd intended. There you are, in effect, with more ketchup and irony than you'd intended, wondering how to avoid similar mishaps and at the same time how to make do with the quantities of each you have on hand. 

This discovery has made you wary of ketchup and irony, but also ill prepared to deal with a surplus of either and a general sense of having no strategy to avoid either. Life is made of excesses of certain things and a great dearth of others, each of us charting his or her personal formula.

A few days back, you had a delightful exchanger with a great chum from your undergraduate days. After he'd texted you with a description of himself today, you were able present a picture of yourself as looking much the way you did then, except for the retreat of a bushy and rebellious hedge of frontal cowlick that had retreated like an army in disgrace.  

Then you realized how physical you description had been, not taking into consideration how you were working your way beyond precocity, toward your destiny of seeming an asshole. Your comfort was the awareness of the bonds of friendship rather than such traces of wariness you experience with regard to ketchup or irony.

Things that are what they seem hold little interest for you to the point where, if questioned about having dropped something because of the perception of it having been hot, your response is, "Not hot. It was what it seemed."

Reaching your current current destination on your way toward the end of the journey, you are reminded of the one thing you admired from the late comedian, Bob Hope.  When he lay on what was his death bed, his wife asked him where he' wanted his final resting place to be.  "Surprise me," he said.

Because of your considerable past experiences, you have every confidence that Life, being what you perceive it to be, will even in this final moment, offer some surprise. You hope to be up to the task of accepting it. In so many ways, you have managed to realize some of your dreams, but almost never in ways you'd thought, nor to the outcome you'd imagined. If, indeed, nothing is as it seems, then least of all are you.