Week 13’s chapter in Ronin’s Journey dealt with a lot, imprisonment, expected backlash, reality not meeting perception (common theme in the book) to the innocence of kids and adults fucking that up but good things coming from it in spite of it all. Here’s an excerpt from it:
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After the previous two days, I spent the next one at a kid’s birthday/Halloween party surrounded by happy kids. I helped with the games and ‘protected’ my nieces from the ‘big bad’ in the haunted house. Times like that I stop thinking and just appreciate the simple lives kids lead. However, I do wonder what adult issues look like to a kid, like adults getting drunk. How does a child process this, do they create a story for it? I know they are curious about what makes adults act silly since kids have a natural curiosity.
I bring it up since after the kids left on a hayride I sat by a fire observing the adults drinking and of them all only three were wasted. It also helped I did not have to play the adult babysitter so I could watch in amusement, however inevitably it seems I have to step in. One was way over the limit, lurching toward my wife and me with a story to tell. He is a goofy drunk who when he was leaning on us slurring, I reached out from my seat to push him just right, and into a chair wondering how he got there.
Drinking is fine if it is a way to relax, it is just not for me since it dims the lenses of life. I like looking at life with eyes wide open. Live a life so full you can die with few regrets; however, some I have learned do not love life. They are content yet unhappy with it. My first thought was dark along the lines of ‘prove it’. The second was sad, I have held life, and I have held death in my hands with just a few months in between. Having seen the fragility and limitedness of it, I think it is something to be cherished, even in the hard times.
Even in darkness, light will pierce through, the little things turn out not to be so little and more appreciated. People are imperfect while going through life making mistakes and overcoming them, which sets another chain of events in motion every time. My parents got married, my sister and I were born, they divorced, married other people and our family grew. Because we had to relocate, my sister met her current boyfriend and I gained nephews and nieces.
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More coming as I write. Are you enjoying the book excerpts?
Totality of life
A Ronin's Journey 