I ate a cold grocery store taco for lunch yesterday and I’ve been thinking about this ever since
It was a carnitas taco, the pre-made kind they wrap in foil and keep by the checkout. I grabbed it on my way out because I forgot to pack lunch, and I was running 10 minutes late to a team check-in, so I never got around to popping it in the break room microwave. I ate it sitting at my desk, cold, congealed cheese and all. The lettuce was still surprisingly crisp, actually. It wasn’t good, exactly. But it wasn’t bad, either. And that got me thinking about the question I saw someone post on a random forum last week: Do people really find life worth living? Like, honestly?
I walk past the same guy every morning on my way to the bus stop. He’s got that old golden retriever that drags him down the sidewalk, and he’s always frowning, always scrolling his phone between stoplights. I’ve lived here three years and I’ve never seen him smile. I used to wonder if he was just having a bad year, or if he’s one of those people who just never got the hang of this whole life thing. But then I thought, how many people do I actually see walking around looking like they’re 100% sure this whole thing is worth it? Most people look tired. Most people look like they’re just going through the motions, checking boxes.
I was at the 24-hour laundromat a couple weeks ago, folding my sheets at 10pm because my dryer broke. There was an older woman there, probably in her 70s, folding socks while Patsy Cline played off a beat-up radio someone taped to the vending machine. She was singing off-key, really loud, and I thought, here’s someone who’s got it figured out. Then her phone rang, she answered, and five seconds later she was slamming it down so hard the whole vending machine rattled. “Fucker forgot my birthday again,” she muttered, and went right back to folding socks and singing. Didn’t skip a word. No big breakdown, no big epiphany. Just… went back to it.
I went to my great aunt’s funeral back in May, right after the lilacs bloomed. After the service we were all hanging around the church basement eating dry ham sandwiches and store-bought cookies, and my 26-year-old cousin blurted it out, just like that. “Do any of you actually think this is worth it? Like, all the stress and the paying bills and the people dying? Really?” The whole room went that awkward dead quiet, you know the one? Where everyone’s staring at their paper plates so they don’t have to say anything. Then my great uncle, who’s 82 and had only just said goodbye to his wife that week, wiped mustard off his chin and said, “Hell, most days it ain’t. But yesterday I found a jar of Mabel’s dill pickles I forgot about in the back of the fridge. Ate three of ‘em with my breakfast. That was enough for that day.” No one cheered. No one cried. We all just nodded, and someone passed the potato chips.
I had a day two weeks ago that made me want to quit everything. I got a flat tire on the way to a job interview I’d been prepping for a month, had to walk three blocks in a rainstorm, my only good suit got soaked through at the cuffs, I showed up late, and I didn’t get the job anyway. I sat on a curb outside the office eating a melted Snickers bar that’d been in my glove compartment for six months, and I thought, what the fuck is the point of any of this? No one’s going to remember this stupid interview, or this stupid flat tire, or any of it. Why am I out here putting myself through this?
The guy who bags my groceries at the corner store has a different dinosaur sticker on his name tag every week. I asked him about it a couple weeks ago, and he said his four-year-old draws him a new one every Sunday night. He told me his job sucks. People are rude to him all the time, he doesn’t get enough hours, his ex-wife gives him a hard time about child support. Most days he clocks out and just wants to go home and drink a beer and not talk to anyone. But then he said, when he walks in the door and she comes running, screaming “DADDY!” and jumps on him, that one minute makes the whole shitty shift worth it. Then he laughed and said some shifts even that don’t fix. Some days he still goes home and drinks that beer and feels like it’s all garbage. He just gets up the next day anyway.
I don’t think anyone actually finds life worth living 100% of the time. I think that’s the big lie we see everywhere, where everyone’s got their perfect vacation and their perfect house and their perfect little family and they’re over here saying life is such an amazing gift. Most people I know don’t feel that. Most days it’s just a bunch of small stuff, half of it annoying, a quarter of it fine, a tiny bit of it actually good. No one’s out here winning at the whole life thing every single day.
I still don’t know the answer to the question, honestly. Some days I say yes, some days I say no. I still lie awake at 2am worrying about all the stuff I haven’t done, all the mistakes I’ve made. I still get mad when my landlord ignores my emails about the broken heat, I still cry when I see a video of a kid hugging their grandma after years apart, I still get awkward when people ask me how I’m doing and I don’t know if I should say “fine” or tell them the truth that I’m mostly fine, just a little tired.
That cold taco yesterday? It wasn’t some big life-changing epiphany. It was just a cold taco. But I ate it, I watched a squirrel steal a french fry off a table outside my window, and for that minute, I didn’t think about anything else. That’s the best I’ve got, I guess. I don’t know if that counts as finding life worth living. But it’s something.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » I ate a cold grocery store taco for lunch yesterday and I’ve been thinking about this ever since