"'Is this normal?' 'For here it is.' I cannot imagine a better question, or a better answer, to explain why I am here. To explain why any of us travel. To explain our hopes as well as our desperation." -Gravity-

What is this all for?  This is the ongoing question.  Preston and I pondered this last night over a beer at the Hive and I believe the only conclusion we came to (well, I’ll speak for myself) is that we will never know what the hell this is all for.  Why do we wake in the morning, why  does it matter if we choose pancakes over omelets or to sit in a coffee shop all day or go to work for 8 hours, or does it even matter at all?  So, what keeps us going?  Is it the prospect of an enjoyable conversation with a close friend later that day? Is it the sunrise we might witness upon waking?  Is it the giggle of a little girl playing in the snow?  Is it the light that makes patterns on the down comforter midmorning, the taste of dark chocolate or beer, the feel of sand and seafoam, or good sex? Is it possibility itself that propels us forward?  Is it mystery?  Is it the unknown?  Is it just to feel ourselves smile? How minute do we feel when we look up and around?  How amazing is that thought in itself?  What if we just did what made us happy, right now, without a reason?  What if we could just relinquish our obsession with the word, why?  What if we learned to live comfortably in the undefinable?  And in the course of twenty-four hours, there are also the moments of undefinable desperation... like the moments you watch a friend of a friend crying in front of you over her son who is killing himself, been slowing severing his ties with life for the past seven years of addiction, and you hug her, not knowing what to say, not knowing anything else about her, and knowing there really is nothing to be said and she quietly fills the silence with "He's going to die.  He doesn't want to live," and she has stopped crying and you feel the pulsing in her body even after you've let go, and you feel the acceptance in her words but mostly the resistance and the reluctance and the desperation and the false sense of security in the smile she tries to wear.  And then she tells you she sits in her closet in the evenings to purge tears after finding him hudled in the snow close to hypothermia around the holidays, not knowing how to help even herself, or her husband who can only handle ten minutes of conversation about him at a time and you can feel mostly all that you can't feel or know and never will, and you step back and look at her and think how can we not ask why in these moments?  How do we attempt to explain what that is all for?