At such a young age, is it possible to have moments that are actually considered important? Am I really much older than I think and it is truly my time to start looking back and reflecting on these so-called “important” moments of my life? Since there is only one way to find out, will this piece of writing help determine the 3 most important moments of my life, or just the first 3 moments that come to mind that I refer to as “important?” Does my grandmother’s death really have that profound of an effect on me that leads me to think of that moment first when someone tells me to think of an important moment in life? My grandmother’s death was easily the hardest thing that I ever had to deal with in my life, but just because something is hard to cope with, is it now suddenly important in one’s life? Or do we just want it to be to justify the difficulty of the event we are going through? I believe there are cases in which the latter and the former are both correct, but for the sake of this essay I will assume this event is important because it is haunted me for years, even though it leads me to yet another question, which is how can one event be so haunting for one person when it has occurred to a multitude of people that seem to continue on with their lives without any issue? Could this be why this event is important to me, because I have the ability to look at the event from a perspective that differs from the norm?

As I will use this as a reference point for determining the importance of an event, I begin to ponder back to that dreadful week of August in 2013, thinking to myself, “What is that still haunts me from those fateful days?” Is it my father walking into my room in the middle of the night to give me the news? Or maybe was it the fact that it was the first time I truly saw my father break down crying and be released from playing the role of a hard patriarch? Or was it that I too broke down and was no longer afraid to show tears in front of those closest to me? Or…was it…just looking…just seeing my grandmother’s…dead…lifeless body…just lying in that casket…an empty body no longer with the soul I fell in love with…over the course of my thirteen years on this Earth? Why must it be this way? I don’t really feel like I learned anything except that life sucks and then we all die, but that is a lesson I deserved to learn? Will writing only bring the pain reeling back to the forefront of my mind, or will it finally give me peace of mind to know that I will be heard by people that I can trust? Maybe I can finally learn a valuable lesson from this experience because of writing, or more likely, can I connect this piece to another point in my life that is just as important, shows my growth from that depressing and tragic experience, and finally feel as though I learned something from that experience?

Later in the year, a hockey team that was deemed weak and mediocre at best in terms of their play, had people questioning, “Can these guys really win the Stanley Cup?” Yes, the New York Rangers, a team that I have followed my entire life, led by idol and goalie of the New York Rangers, Henrik Lundqvist, had the world scratching their heads and saying to anyone who would listen, “Who the hell are these guys and where did they come from?” At the start of the playoffs, the Rangers were huge underdogs and written off by the media, but this wouldn’t be important if I didn’t see this memory from a perspective that differs from the norm of society, would it? This moment stands out as my favorite playoff run that I have ever seen by a professional sports team and the sentimental value it holds to me because of my grandmother, but what could she possibly have to do with a hockey team that was making a miracle run to the Stanley Cup in 2014? Well, what if I told you one of the players on the Rangers, a newly acquired player whose mother had just died, scored a goal on Mother’s Day and pointed to the sky as his teammates embraced him with hugs as he began to tear up? Not to mention this player had just joined the team as I had just mentioned, meaning that he was someone who was barely known by the players, but still, every single player took the time to go to his mother’s funeral in the middle of what would be their last Stanley Cup run since? As soon as I was sure that the Ranger were going to win the Stanley Cup, they fell apart and lost the Stanley Cup in a matter of 5 grueling games, which has me thinking…what was the point? Really, what was the point? To have all this love and support around me to pick me up in one of my saddest times only to see my idol laying on the ice after giving up the game-winning goal in double overtime, why? Just why? After looking back at this memory, I now realize that not every story has to have a bad ending because does it really have to have an ending at all? The Rangers are still chasing a Stanley Cup to this day and have never been back to the championship, and my grandmother still has her body lying in a peaceful cemetery while her soul is certainly in a better place, and will this ever end? The answer is no, but why does that matter? Because life never truly ends and we are always chasing something, I should be happy with this experience? Yay, I can never stop being in pain…why can’t I look at it like that?

Well, what about experience 3? Will it finally end this convoluted mess that is this blog post? Well not exactly, because I am in fact living in experience 3 as we speak…which is? Well, I don’t know exactly, but the thing is I didn’t realize the importance of those events until I realized my difference in perspective, so as I am writing this, I am performing a little experiment and asking myself…what do I currently believe in that differs from the norm and will cause me to change my life forever? Wait, I think I got it…it’s…something I won’t know until I look back at this blog post (or don’t) in the next 5 years or so just like I did these other 2 memories?

Will an old essay I wrote finally give me an answer to the meaning of life or whatever the hell I am writing about in this damn blog post? One of my favorite books of all time is The Grapes of Wrath…wait that one book we were all forced to read at one point in time? Yes, and just because you are forced to do something doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it…which is the meaning of life? No, no, that’s not right, but maybe I should stop forcing this issue of trying to find answers to things I may never figure out? Well, that would be nice, but would I get points deducted on this post if I ended even in one sentence without a question mark? Let’s try it…wait, should I? Eh, if it happens it happens…right? Damn it, I did it again, let’s just get back to The Grapes of Wrath (I already know I am going to end this with a question mark), right? Anyways, that novel explores the idea of light vs darkness and how those two dichotomies express what it truly means to be human rather than a soulless being equivalent to my grandmother’s body in the cemetery, only she can’t hurt anyone like these soulless characters in the novel do, but what makes them soulless? What causes them to be cast by this shadow of darkness or halo of light? If I knew the answer to that question I constantly explored throughout that novel, would I have the answer to any of these questions I have asked? There I go again trying to force answers, but I really do wonder what does it mean to have a soul and be that lightning rod that casts a sea of wealth and richness in love rather than a soulless being that is without love and is therefore cast by darkness? Maybe that’s all it is…love? I have figured it out…did I? Is love what drove the importance of my grandmother’s death and my passion for the New York Rangers?

According to the Ted Talk I just viewed, personal relationships mean the world to us, and it is the love that stems from those relationships that lead us to better lives and truly create that Rat Park that prevents us from falling into the dark abyss of addiction to something other than the love of another human being, but how do we actually achieve it? Now that we know we need bonds, how do we solve this mystery of love and bonds, something that seems harder to solve than the meaning behind addiction, but hey…wasn’t that solved? So maybe that is our purpose, to find love? We do it just so we can prevent ourselves from being drug and porn addicts, and so we can get a tax break? How do I know if I have found love from a family member or friend? What statistics do I need? What questions do I need to ask? Are you loved? How do you know? Can you fall out of love? Is it ever worth it to fall out of love? Does love grow, or just the person’s idea of love? Am I crazy for asking all of these questions? Just for the hell of it I’m going to answer it…or will I (damn it I swear to God if I add a question mark at the end of this conclusion…)?

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.