2026: Chapter 5

A long time ago my uncle told me the problem with life experience is that you receive it directly after the moment you can use it. I don’t remember how exactly he phrased himself, or if it was a parable he was referencing, but it was good stuff. It felt really, like, powerful when I heard it. Because it made sense to my stupid 19- or 20 year-old brain.

I’ve lived most of my adult life attempting to keep in mind that general sentiment — because it’s one of those things that can’t not be true — and yet the older I get the more it seems that perspective doesn’t come so quickly as that. Perspective is not picking lottery numbers and realizing that you should’ve instead selected the winners. More often than not you don’t even realize that you have it, perspective, that is, because the moment when it was needed happened so far back that it renders almost meaningless in retrospect.

I imagine it’s just a byproduct of age. Having personal issues as a teenager concentrates everything down to a day-by-day exercise since even the small things feel like the end of the world. Having financial issues as a 20-something year-old seems to turn every matter into a paycheck-by-paycheck undertaking, which requires making a plan, and whittling down your debt as efficiently as possible. Perspective to a 35 year-old such as me, who has experienced both personal issues as a teenager and financial issues as a 20-something, really only means that life will go on. It only means that we have been through much worse.

As a chronic over-thinker I would wager it’s why I enjoy watching stuff about space, and the oceans, and about life on earth throughout millennia. I like how it feels to have my own existence put into perspective, which is to say it is incredibly infinitesimal and inconsequential to the absolute utmost. I watch semi-frequently Life On Our Planet (narrated by Morgan Freeman) on Netflix to fall asleep to, and it never gets old to hear that dinosaurs — Planet Earth’s greatest dynasty — dominated our planet for over 150 million years.

I think about Carl Sagan, one of my GOATs, when he gave his monologue about the pale blue dot, which goes like this:

From this distant vantage point, the earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings. How eager they are to kill one another. How fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else — at least in the near future — to which our species could migrate. Visit? Yes. Settle? Not yet.

Like it or not, for the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot.

Not only is that honest, and real perspective, but in some way it contributes heavily to the way I see the world. It is philosophical and political and weaves within it my own personal religious (or non-religious) outlook — to treat others how I wanted to be treated — and it acts as one of the great sermons that ever has been orated. It allows me to know where my feet are when I am going through whatever existential crisis is occurring.

I think it’s easy to be selfish and imagine myself at the center of my own universe, because I kind of am, in a way. It ought to feel depressing that I, Eric, am occupying a space that could last a hundred years, which by then would mean I will die in the year 2090, which will mean that the United States of America will be exactly 313 years and 8 months old when I die.

And then I think about evolutionary biology, and how the most knowledgeable evolutionary biologists in the history of the world estimate that human beings have existed for anywhere between 150,000 and 250,000 years, and how one hundred humble years hardly registers on such a scale. 100 goes into 150,000 a mere 1,500 times. 100 goes into 250,000 just 2,500 times. That makes me worth anywhere between 0.00067 years of my own kind, on the generous end, and 0.0004 years on the low end.

Then we talk about an actual dynasty, the dinosaurs, and we think about how human beings have only been around for maybe 200,000 years (if we take the average of the smartest evolutionary biologists in the history of the world). And we argue that 200,000 years goes into a million years five times. And then we multiply that number, five, by 150 (which is how many millions of years dinosaurs roamed the earth), and that’s where we really understand how small we are.

I think about every heartbreak I have ever encountered, at the expense of every girl whom I have loved. I think about every year I believed truly that the Kansas City Chiefs, or Duke University’s basketball team, or the Texas Rangers, should have won their respective championship but didn’t. I think about every lie I told that I got away with in real life but that bothered me nonetheless because I didn’t actually get away with it, according to my own morals and principles. I think about every minor and major accomplishment I have ever obtained or fallen into. I think about the bridges I’ve burned and those that were burned at my expense. I think about the quiet moments that only I know.

And none of them really mean anything. They do, and they don’t. They do because I am the most important person in the history of the universe, per yours truly, and they don’t because the most important person in the history of the universe, even speaking unironically, does not mean much on the amazing like overwhelmingly unconscionable timeline we are dealing with. What is a grain of sand, really? What is a drop in the bucket?

I spend like three minutes every night before work doing my hair and making sure it looks presentable. On my weekends I try to match my sweatpants with my sweatshirt and I look at myself in the mirror before I go grocery shopping. I felt a little bit nervous every night while I was on my way to Chuck E. Cheese to see my former love interest and her children because I wanted to look like the best version of myself. I clean up my condo every time I know I am going to have company. I sweep my front porch. I sweep my back porch. Even when I know I won’t have company.

They say your reputation is how others see you, but that your character is revealed when no one is watching. What book would be written about me, and what sources would the author of my biography draw from? What book would I write about myself, and how utterly different would the two look? What does my reputation say about me? What does the way in which I view myself disprove my reputation and better reflect my character?

Because of the meaninglessness of the human experience, I feel over the years that I have done a sort of double-reverse and attempted to make my life as meaningful as possible. As a child I thought life meant nothing without the promise of finding my rightful place in Heaven, for being a good person and living a good life, so I was not prepared for how liberated I felt when I realized that I didn’t need religion or the dangled carrot of an afterlife to live an honorable life.

As a teenager I gave up on the idea of love after my first real girlfriend broke up with me, yet over the last 15 years I have found that love is the only thing I have ever been looking for. I generally see the entire painstaking exercise to be a complete waste of time, and still the romanticism of my youth triumphs over everything where there exists even the hint of a spark and I become a slave to believing in an idea that I seemingly retired from before I ever reached the age of 20.

I have hardened my heart, time after time, and receded further into my own selfish wills, caring only about how much money I make and how much money I save and how much spending power I possess — only to admit that I am not motivated by money. Like knowledge, the more I have the more that I understand I have none at all.

Us earthlings tend to be extremely arrogant regarding our place in the universe. The dominant religion — Christianity — serves the most dominant country — The United States of America — at this very specific point in time. We have won the wars and we have written the history books. Like every other empire who had their time in the sun, we believe that God is on our side. Of all the religions and all the gods who have ever existed since the dawn of homo sapiens, we have decided collectively that there is only one, and that He has decided in our favor.

And I think of how terrible it must have been for those very first humans, living alongside the now-extinct wooly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers. How the average lifespan was 20, or maybe 30 years. How most of them died from awful diseases related to their teeth, and tiny microorganisms that we wouldn’t find a name for for another hundred thousand years. How every tribe warred for women, and food, and territory, and how they couldn’t communicate well enough so they did the only thing that mammals long for naturally, which is to rape and kill one another.

I think about ice ages and hurricanes and off-the-scale earthquakes and the eruption of volcanos, and how each and every sect of people who occupied real estate must have believed that these naturally recurring phenomena were a punishment from their god. I think about the women and children who died during birth. I think how cruel of an existence it was, just to carry the ball forward a little longer, to ensure the survival of future generations.

I think about how much of a miracle it is that civilization made it this far — that we are still here. I think about how much those earliest of settlers of our species would dream to have my own personal problems, where they would have food and shelter, where they would not have to rape and pillage to have a cheeseburger to eat, or the warmth of another woman lying down willingly next to them, where they would have the comfort and security of being able to contemplate what it all means. Where they would begin life so much higher, or further north, of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

I think about generations well in advance of my own — perhaps another hundred or two hundred thousand years from now — and how much they will pity just how little I, Eric, knew of the world that surrounded me while I was stuck as slave to the information of my time. I think about how lazy and complacent they will be by way of basic mathematics, or advanced trigonometry, or calculus, or even rocket science, because those will all be mere givens by then. I think about how they’ll even take for granted literature of all kinds, since by then I am sure they’ll simply be able to download all the classics into their brains.

I think about this image I have of the future, as I assume that these future generations will care as much as they possibly can about knowing as much as they possibly can — similar to how feel. I think about how much I care about knowing where I came from, and the humblest of beginnings insofar as my own species was concerned, as I extrapolate that into believing everyone in the future will care, too. I think about how they will just be better, smarter versions of who I am. I think about how much I take for granted compared to those earliest of homo sapiens from a hundred thousand years ago, and thus I think about how much future generations will take for granted when they look back at people like me, from a hundred thousand years prior.

But then I guess that is why life is and always has been so simple. Because always the givens will be the givens. Always we will know as much as science allows us to know. Always we will know that 2 + 2 = 4. Always we will have classic literature and we will have our preferences as to which authors we like and which authors we do not. Always we will have the haves and the have nots, and always people like me will exist on that fringe that is comfortable enough to survive and yet knows a better way is possible.

Which brings me back to what this is all about: That whether one existed from the dawn of human time, or presently, or as far into the future as you choose to imagine, each and all of us have dealt, and do deal, and will deal with the same fucking problems. We will mourn the tragedy of death of our loved ones. We will lament love that was lost. We will appreciate where we are and simultaneously long for how different things could be.

Until I am blue in the face I can offer this approach as perspective. It is all I have ever had at my honest and frank disposal, because it’s real. Life began in the oceans until some rebellious creature decided one day that it had to make its way out. And while the dinosaurs were roaming the earth for 150 million years small and insignificant creatures were burrowed underground waiting simply for a Mt. Everest-sized asteroid to hit the earth and wipe out the dinosaurs root and stem such that they, the tiny afterthought mammals, could begin their own run of dominance.

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I called off work four days in a row this week. I wasn’t sick or anything; I just needed to get away from the casino to get my mind right. It’s also a quite simple math equation insofar as time off is concerned: If you call off one day, it costs you two points (out of an extremely conservative annual amount of just ten); if you call off four days consecutively it costs you, still, just two points. In other words it doesn’t make a ton of sense to take just one day when four in a row is worth the same penalty.

Usually I take only one day, because my decisions aren’t always so rational. I can actually count on one hand the number of times over the last ten years I have taken the full four. Part of it is related to the fact — and, strangely, it is a fact — that I love working, and time away means (logically and necessarily) that I won’t make as much money. Part of it is because I normally don’t have anything better to do. Another part is that I normally throw on a mask and work when I am legitimately sick, and when I do take time off it’s typically so I can watch a big sporting event that one of my favorite teams is involved in.

I took four days off this week because it’s been about a year since I have taken more than a day, and whether I like it or not casinos — in spite of how much I adore the atmosphere and the ability I have to earn money — tend to be pretty toxic work environments. Players can be extremely negative. Coworkers can be extremely negative. I have a small gaggle of friends and confidants with whom I enjoy passing the time, but most of them work on day shift and thus I see them only sparingly.

And so I do, over time, even when I don’t realize it, become a ticking time bomb unto myself. My labors turn me into a much more negative person than I am naturally (which is to say: hardly at all), and it wears and scrapes and chisels me down to the place I arrived at four days ago when I decided I’ve had enough. It’s always a healthy exercise, and simultaneously it always makes me yearn to be back at the casino.

My way of getting back to the center was to visit my family in Lake Elsinore CA. I disrupted my routine and it was completely worth it, just seeing my mom and both of my brothers. I opened up some and we all got to talk and bullshit about the nothings that have been going on in our lives. It was nothing and everything all at once.

I was just recharging my batteries. That was all. From here I imagine I’ll be on a straight shot through the end of the year, taking no days off, with each passing week and month acting as a reminder for that small four-day stretch I took in the middle of February. My very good friend Spencer told me two or three years back that I had to get out of the casino for a couple weeks every year, for my own mental health. He told me that when I was on the verge of taking two weeks off for the first time in my professional life, which was the last time I took any meaningful time away. That was in 2023.

If anything, I think it only highlights the somewhat unique prowess I possess for eating shit on such a regular basis and making a roast out of it. It has been too long since I have taken personally any verbal assaults from players; mostly I just make fun of them. The players, I mean. It’s been a while since I have been so beaten down by the smorgasbord of bitching and complaining I receive from various coworkers on a daily basis. The whole casino operation, from both ends — internal and external — I generally refuse to let it get to me.

It is really only when my own personal life becomes intertwined with it, the casino, that I have to get away. I never know it until it happens, but when it happens I have no choice. And I have no one to blame that on other than myself. I have no problem carrying this weight that rests squarely upon me on a day-to-day, or month-to-month, or even year-to-year basis. It’s a multiple-year affair in most cases, as has been proven.

I am not Liam Neeson from Taken, when he said he had a very specific set of skills, skills he had acquired over a very long career, but I am on that road, so to speak. I do have an abnormal amount of empathy for most people — big and small, young and old, patron or coworker contemporary — and although I make myself the hero and the star of my own person blog, I cannot stress how little of my personal life I bring into any situation that does not involve loved ones or immediate family members. I make myself second, almost all the time.

Many, nonetheless, view me as arrogant and condescending and at times patronizing because of my outlook on political beliefs and religious beliefs and my desire not to accept anything at face value. Maybe it’s just the smirky way my face looks, or the tone of my voice that comes out naturally and/or involuntarily. And still I have always accepted a very large tent of people who disagree with me. I have earned their composite trust because, generally, I don’t see them as all that different from anyone I have ever known — or even myself.

But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t grate at me. Not in large swathes, but in the way that tiny specks of dust dissolve from top to bottom in an hourglass, or how insignificant droplets fall and inevitably pool from faucet to a sink left clogged. I simply don’t have it in me to challenge everyone all the time on petty and objectively insignificant items I disagree with, for they are far too frequent and inarguably vast. I let them go, almost every one and almost every thing, and the consequence is that I let myself go. I am the one who inevitably has to deal with it — on my own time and in my own solitude.

This is the tradeoff for making more money than I ever imagined myself making at this age, or any age for that matter. It is more money than either of my parents ever made, individually or collectively. It is more money than I ever would have made had I actually accomplished the dream I set out for originally, of being a sports writer, where once I imagined myself as an important Capital J journalist. It is how I have sold myself out over the years.

The philosophical dilemma is an ordinary one, and something I have spoken on several times over the lifespan of this blog. Why is money the root of both my happiness and identification of self-worth, yet simultaneously the one aspect of my life that brings me such unhappiness? Why was I so much happier and more content with myself back in the so-called days when I made only $12.50 per hour doing accounts receivable for an auto auction company? Why did I feel a greater sense of community when I was working in the casino industry making $40,000 per year instead of like three times presently? The phrase We’re All In The Same Boat is the original socialist position, and when we all have nothing we actually have it all — even though we never know it.

There are political and economic answers, of course, about the power of a dollar in 2011 compared to 2026. About the cost of rent in 2011 compared to 2026. About the cost of groceries. Etcetera, etcetera. We can accept all of those as the givens, and still it doesn’t seem to change the fact. The fact is, contrary to what Drake said when he opined on ‘Up All Night’ (2010) that: Niggas with no money act like money isn’t everything, it never brought me any more sense of fulfillment than when I was ostensibly broke.

Because where I come from, nobody had (or has) anything. So when I began to understand that I had something, anything, it was supposed to make me feel really good about myself. I was talking about this with someone I have known for the better part of a decade, and I talked about driving a race car in my mid-20’s, and owning a Mercedes in my late-20’s and early-30’s, and that right now I drive a Honda fucking Civic. I told him I used to need those things. I needed them to say something about me because I wasn’t able to say something about myself. I was insecure beyond the insecurities I deal with nowadays.

Again, some might call this my age that is speaking. Some might call it perspective. Some might call it the natural and logical progression that manifests itself only through life experience. You can call it what you want. All I know is never before have I been smarter and more self-aware and, just, better, than I am in this exact moment in time. A handful of minutes, and then hours, and then days and weeks and months and years will pass, and I will be able to say the exact same thing. I will remember this moment as one of ignorance, and stupidity, and convince myself that now, and only now — whenever that now happens to be — will I be on the right track.

I am, similar to most (or all), a flawed person. I deserve a lot of credit for how much I have learned, and how far I have come, and how I have beaten so many of the odds that constantly plague so many people both from my own personal hometown and the country I live in and the world at large. I am proud of myself for my accomplishments in life. The things I have seen, and the people I have had the pleasure of knowing and loving, and the things I have done, and the things that have been done to me. It’s been a pretty cool fucking life.

But by being so flawed I know also that I require, if not deserve, some degree of forgiveness. You must forgive me for not knowing the things that I do not know. You must forgive that I am simultaneously the king of my universe and a peasant child at understanding yours. I should know better, always, but I am so constrained to the limits of my own knowledge and perspective and life experience that, at a certain point, a little grace is necessary.

The standard that I hold myself to leaves no room for excuses, or second chances, or mulligans of any manner. It is a very cut-and-dry, black-and-white world that I inhabit. The things I ask of for myself I seldomly offer to others. But I suppose that is what makes every circumstance so circumstantial.

Perspective has been delivered to me. Sometimes it is better to be a peasant in a world of abundance than it is to be the king of nothing.