To Be or Not to Be - A Life for You or Me?

​To give my life for yours is a decision I don't have to decide.

I have this constant, nagging urge to sacrifice my life for the sake of someone else's. It has gotten worse with age, and it gets unbearably worse in the moments I am most gratified. It is especially heightened on the days I find glimpses of the pleasure I have spent and continue to spend much of my life looking for. These blessed feelings always seem to slip out of my grip- stuck in an endless cycle of being caught and being lost. This is a universal experience, the push and pull of good and bad. An inescapable consequence of life. That is okay. It is what lets us know what makes these great feelings so great, anyway.

However, this urge does lessen at times. It disappears slightly, though never completely, in the moments I am most in love, or most happy. In these moments, I am overcome with that beautiful, drunken sensation that only true emotional wealth can create. These are the things, the moments, the people- but especially the people- that are most intoxicating. These are the things that force you to hold on tighter to something than you ever have before. In these moments, you cling with the strength of an iron grip to the thing keeping your vision straight- despite being unable to overcome the dizziness and disarray of being wasted. In these moments you also make decisions that you do not decide. In these moments, on these days, these months- or if you are one of the luckiest of the lucky, these years- every path in front of you, that would be the one you took sober, becomes nothing more than a maze full of funhouse mirrors. None of the things you might have done yesterday make sense anymore. There is nothing that could convince you that there is a choice better than the one that keeps you from ever letting go of this moment- that could let your grip on this thing, that is keeping you standing upright, risk even the slightest slip. There is nothing more important than this life-line of a thing that is holding you still enough to see the funhouse-filled maze, at all.

In these moments, I hold on for dear life. There is a salvation that comes with finding, even just a semblance, of the happiness you have spent your life searching for. It makes you selfish. It makes me selfish. It makes me new. I do not know how to live in these moments without some guilt banging around inside of me. Without the unwanted toxin of shame constantly threatening to seep into my bloodstream and poison the arteries that let a happy heart beat. To feel guilt for good feelings, I imagine, is not such a universal experience- nor is it a natural consequence of being alive- but I do imagine that it is still an all-consuming truth for many. Simply just to feel this guilt makes me selfish. It magnifies this already irrational condemnation and triples its size, all to create an even greater self-centered being that, especially in these moments, I despise.

Love makes you stupid- but how beautiful it is to be forced into foolishness by something as delicate and marvelous as love, and happiness.

It makes life wonderfully, ragingly simple. Yet, it also makes you a little empty-headed. A trade-off worth making, I’d say. The battle between self-preservation and selflessness is one that is a bit dumb, anyway. The guide to balancing giving and taking, to embrace some well-deserved hedonism while practicing the compassion that comes with self-sacrifice, would be much less frustrating should it be better defined. Nothing is defined enough in life. This is no exception. There is no promise to let you know that you have done it right, that you are doing it right- but oh, how I wish this could be the question, just this one, that could be the exception.

I hate the guilt that comes with the blessings of being happy.

On the days I am most at peace and overcome with nothing other than contentment, I do not make the decisions that decide to give my life for yours. I would do it blind. However, I would also make this same reflexive, instinct-driven decision while intoxicatingly happy- but in those moments, there is an undeniable switch from all to one. That thing- that person- becomes the ultimate object of my sacrificial affection. These are moments where I would also, without hesitation, give my life. To feel something so profoundly good has a special way of making the already inconvenient guilt of a good day worse. Sometimes the shame hits me only a little, but it mostly just slams its entire body unapologetically into mine. Is it selfish to narrow down the greater half of my altruism to a single person? I ask this in the name of being truly honest in my questioning- because it is hardly ever a thing that could make me feel such an unwavering, dedication to its protection that I would exchange its life for mine- it is usually, if not always, the life of an admired other.

Sometimes I imagine it to be my mom, and I can feel the useless tears begin to fill my eyes. In others, it is the face of my best friend. If these moments ever came to be, I would, without the slightest sense of hesitancy, let myself fall. I would take this fall, even if it meant I would never get the chance to fall again. I would take the loss in moments much less serious if it meant giving a glimmer of the warmth born by happiness- that I hope is felt wholeheartedly and purely, with any notions of guilt far gone and forgotten. Perhaps it is the chance to see the world outside of a hometown for the first time, or to buy the last book left on a tired store-shelf.

Let them buy the book. Let them take the last train ticket, or have the last piece of cake at a boring birthday party- and one day, someone will step aside and selflessly hand these moments back to you. That is the cycle of life I pray for. I believe in karma, I suppose, more than I believe in much else. Sometimes, I think that my faith in this unprovable idea borders on religious- but all faith is absurd, so place it wherever you please. Place it in the place that lets you embrace the absurdity of faith, at all.

It is selfish. To think my good actions may be pointed back at me someday seems hardly altruistic. It is not always why I make the choice that sets me in second place- but I cannot deny that, at times, it is- but should they never repeat and circle back my way, it would be alright. It feels good, anyway. I guess this might be fine. I suppose being selfish every now and then isn’t the biggest sin one can commit. We all deserve a good life. We all deserve getting to experience some of the little, and some of the big things that make for a good life. I feel selfish writing this- but I know I am not the only one struggling with the guilt that comes with having a happy moment. I have read enough books, studied enough films, and binged enough T.V. shows to know that there is an abundance of characters who feel this fear of being undeserving of a good thing. Maybe as a result of a particular pain point from their past, which has yet to be evicted from their mind, or perhaps it is the side-effect of a life spent around people who steal the happiness of others for the sake of their own. Either way, these characters are all the same- defeatedly unable to accept that they are allowed to let good things come their way. It is not unheard of, is what I am trying to say.

I will admit that I have yet to heal well enough to truly feel what I am now about to say, but I want to end this with something I know, without doubt, to be true- and with that, I hope that I will, one day, be able to indulge in this truth, too.

You are inarguably, undeniably deserving of a good life.

If there is one thing you must hold onto forever- that you must cling to in the moments you are wasted on wonderful feelings and the times you are a sunken ship in a sea of guilt- please, hold onto this:

To have a good life is not a gift you must earn, it is a birthright.



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