If life were a sitcom...

It's a sleepy summer night in silent Sioux Falls, and after watch a magnificent seven hours of sitcom-esque television, I have to admit, my thoughts remain in twenty minute spurts. And wouldn't it be great if that, sometimes at least, was how life truly was? What if in twenty minutes all the problems we have could be resolved in a nice, neat finish with an indie rock crescendoing just as the credits begin to roll. But alas, the difficult problems of life seem rarely resolved within these brief interludes, and rather they seem to last way, way to long (coincidentally, like many American sitcoms). Regardless, as I sit here on my patio with a long cigar and a fine Nordeast, I wonder about those things towards which we project ourselves. I don't know if it's possible for us to imagine our lives as anything other than neat and tidy. No one, speaking of course in generalities, imagines her or his life tainted with difficulty and tragedy; we believe that not only will the best happen to us, but it will also happen for each of our friends and for all those we care about. As unrealistic as it may be, though, when I think of the future, I cannot help but imagining that each of my friends is incredibly happy, with successful jobs and wonderful relationships, both romantic and not. I don't know what it is, for even though there are days when I have no hope in the decency of human beings, that lost letter still gets mailed.

As many of you know, I struggle with religious labels, and even though I remain most unsure in this regard, I do believe that we are all being directed towards something. Call it fate, destiny, the call of the universe- we are moving towards something. Everything that happens to us and everything that we cause to happen leads us there. Just as each thing that has led us to this point had to happen just in the right way to lead us to who we are now, so must each action we make lead us towards some future version of ourselves, and I, as the cynical optimist, the happy humanist, and the occasionally imbibing intellectual, choose to believe that this future version is going to be even better than the one now.