False Idolatry

2nd part of 8/6

That year he ended his life was a year to forget but I can’t. Dealing with an undiagnosed ankle problem that kept me from restful sleep, working sixty hours a week led me to wondering, i’d go into trances watching water going down the hole in the shower until the pain would bring me back. I’d see signs I didn’t want to see, think things I didn’t want to think. I’d been there before and survived - my heart and love for my brothers and sister made me. Was this different? The excuses that came up were the opposite of selfish. Its a fight against it. Did it do me any good to suffer? Stupidiy its those dark hours that make me  write. Maybe writing is a prolonged suicide note. 

We are all influenced by the lives of others, some by athletes, some by mathematicians, some by vacuous reality tv stars, some by religion, some by the tragic and anything else you can think of, people now might be influenced by AI avatars. It defines us and yet its not us, we are born raw. You can forget the music you listened to as a teen or the books you read in your twenties but they have had an influence, they have left an impression. Maybe the bible was right about idolatry. Its a misdirection. Ask yourself - am I an idolater? I am and have been. The pursuit of someone else’s life through copying, mimicry only leads you away from who are. Your heroes have heroes, they have followed them to be where they are and that goes also for those that haven’t made it. What makes the difference between you and them, often circumstance or strong belief. 

I could have met Bourdain by accident  once, on my birthday years ago in London thinking of where to go for lunch - I don’t remember where I ate but I tried to go to Sweetings- they were full. A year or two later on episode of The Layover I saw that Bourdain and Fergus ate there that day. What would have happened if I had met him? I wouldn’t be writing this. How much would it have changed my life? I don’t know. As they say its better to not your idols. They will be human, a signature or a photo or a handshake isn’t going to make you famous or make the opposite sex start lining up. Along with hero worship its worth remembering what Thomas Aquinas wrote about: Money, Power, Pleasure and Fame. The pursuit comes at a price, it catches up with us all in the end Bec cause there is an end and that can’t change and that’s what makes surviving worth more than anything.