What was, is. What is, will be.

          Are you tired?  I'm tired.  Do you feel sick?  I have a headache.  Are you secure?  I am tens of thousands of dollars in debt, have a part-time job that I haven't even started yet that could end at any time, and resume that could get me a job at Starbucks but doesn't seem to interest anyone else.  Are you inevitable?  I am.

          I look around my room, a wasteland of half-unpacked junk that I've developed an emotional attachment to, and what I feel is that this is inevitable for me to become what I must become.  There is nothing perfect about me.  I'm a huge wad of clay, all potential and no actual.  I'm tired, in pain, disorganized, unmotivated, and basically without any redeeming characteristics beyond what I one day could be.  But what I will be is a function of what I am and what I was.

          There is no difference between me a year ago and me a year from now.  This mess around me, figuratively and literally, is the means by which I will become the man I am to be.  It's not something to be avoided or overcome.  It's a springboard into the future, where I will be far more than I could imagine right now.  I'm not afraid of my mess, because I know that it will take care of me.  It is my future, manifested here in the present where I can see it with my own eyes.  It will easily and naturally take me to the place where I belong, and the less I fight it the sooner I will get there.

          Normally, a mess is something to clean up, a nasty thing to be avoided at all costs and gotten rid of as soon as possible.  That's just destructive positivity talking, though.  In our society (or my society, at least), we are taught that our lives are supposed to be full of bright sunshine and clean floors.  Darkness and uncertainty are things to be avoided.  This is wrong, because darkness and uncertainty are as necessary to our development as sunshine.  Not only that, but we can't seem to get rid of them no matter how hard we try to look at shadows as if they were daylight.  I don't believe that positivity is necessarily a positive thing, nor do I believe that negativity is necessarily negative.  If my world is messy, I say let it be messy.  It will clean itself up if I let it.  Our lives are not guided by the thermodynamic principle of entropy;  a body, left to its own devices, often repairs itself.  If we stop picking at our wounds in an effort to get them to heal, maybe our lives can repair themselves too.

          As bad as my messy life is, I'm sure you feel like yours is worse, if only because you don't feel mine at all.  That's ok.  See, you're inevitable too.  You don't need to fight to go anywhere or to get out of anything.  You're already there.  Your mess is proof of that.  You may be going places, but those places have always been your own.  Unhappiness, uncertainty, and pain are not to be feared.  They are the harbingers of your future and they are here to help you.  Question is, are you ready to accept that, or do you need more help?