I'm nobody! Who are you?

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

by Emily Dickinson

Amazing poem ... but takes some getting used to in real life.

Of late, in the mornings, on history channel, they show various battles from the second world war and in most of them, there are also some interviews with survivors. Incredibly lucky people that survived battle after battle after battle to actually see the war end and live on to a ripe old age.

I don't know how they feel or whether they consider themselves to be all that lucky. Imagine watching so many of your friends dying around you - violently. Imagine, living every moment not knowing whether it would be your last. Imagine coming back home to find half of your childhood friends haven't made it back ... scars like that don't heal.

I envy them though.

In their youth, they had a purpose. Something to live for and die for. Perhaps this is a romanticized view of the draft ... you had to fight irrespective of what you believed in ... your country is at war ... you cannot stand and question why ... yours is to but to do or die ... (misquoted).

Having lived through such times of tremendous uncertainty, and having come out alive, I am sure they are able to appreciate each and everything around them a lot more than we ever will. After seeing all that death, they must fully comprehend just how much of a blessing life really is. Eating soggy bully beef from a leaky can as the rain pours on you and drips down your trench coat to collect in puddles around your feet ... a mix of earth, ashes, cigarette stubs, gun powder, diesel, lubricating oils ... and last but not the least ... blood. I am sure someone that has had a meal like that won't crib too much about the salt in the food. They will appreciate that their hands don't smell of stale moist tobacco and the air doesn't smell of burnt flesh as they eat. The fact that the food is warm, has been served on a table, on a clean dish, under a glowing light, in a warm house and smells so wonderful.

Each day on earth must be a like a day in heaven for them... though sleep might be difficult to come across and every dream may take them back to some obscure beach at the other end of the world with tracer bullets shooting up spurts of dirt around the ankles.

I pity us. A generation that has gotten things on a platter and cannot really appreciate it for what it is. Perhaps I should speak for myself.

No place for a Vasco da Gama or a Columbus to go to ... no new straits for a Captain Cook to sail. No battles for a Nelson to fight, no valley of death for a light brigade to charge (though it might be better not to mention this particular goof up and portray it as something that it never was to begin with).

We live in times when all of gigmanity lives one common dream - how much wealth can you accumulate. Bill Gates is God. Most people appreciate Tiger Woods not so much for the golf that he plays as much as for the money that it has earned him. Perhaps, it can be said that every other example that I have taken was also driven by a lust for wealth ... explorers that wanted to make money ... be it from spices or slaves or new lands ... but somehow it all feels different.

The whole point of this post is perhaps just the inner turmoil that I have.
Here I am ... and who am I? And what have I done? And what will I do? And when will I do it?
Here is me fighting with myself. The realization dawned earlier perhaps but the acceptance is still not there ... that I am just another average guy with a 9 to 5 job who has pretty much lived a good part of his life and really doesn't have much to show for it.

Everyday life is about too many things that I never thought it would be about ... mundane ... paying bills, negotiating the traffic to office, paying taxes, buying groceries, repairing the sump, figuring out how to buy a house ...

Is this what life is all about?

So ... do I accept things the way they are and settle down to being nobody? Or do I have the guts to do something about it ... and if so what? what would really measure up to be a purpose in life?

This isn't so much about being somebody as it is about being able to look back at life and smile with satisfaction and tell god:

... tell god ... something short and crisp and quotable.