By: Jared Weiss

Behold life, in all its glory,
life so full of wonderful riches,
of love and laughter,
of happiness and peace,
all seamlessly swept under the rug,
trampled upon by the masses,
masses with agendas,
with checklists full of boxes,
the boxes of life,
all of the things that
need to be accomplished,
all of the burdens that
need to be unloaded,
in a world where they come
twice as fast as they go,
ostensibly all this in pursuit
of the good life we all strive for,
only it so often feels more like
striving and less like living,
caught up in a sticky web
of tasks and choices affecting
the people of our lives,
who we sometimes like
and we sometimes hate,
who we sometimes hold close
and we sometimes push away,
not to mention ourselves,
so obsessed with liberty
and the pursuit of happiness
that we forgot about life;
we were too busy pursuing,
and those forefathers of old
never guaranteed success in that pursuit
because even then, they knew it was only
an ideal for most, something that
happened to other people, but not us.
Still we hope that maybe
we can become one of the
lucky few, the lucky ones that
by some miracle manage to
figure out the whole blasted thing,
only we do it the same ways
we always have, going about the
same lives we have always led,
somehow expecting that
if we just give it time, it will pay off;
a world full of gamblers playing
the lifelong slot machines.