You have to understand, the word “apocalypse” has been hijacked by a bunch of priests and movie producers. They sell you this idea of a big, loud, and completely impersonal ending to the world. A show you get to watch from a safe distance.
What a load of horseshit.
The real apocalypse, the only one that matters, it doesn’t happen out there, in the streets. It happens in here, in the quiet, ugly, and beautiful wilderness of your own goddamn soul. It’s the end of a world, alright. Your world.
I saw it once, up in Bend, Oregon. I was watching them burn the fields. The whole goddamn horizon was a wall of fire and smoke. And I asked some old farmer what the hell was going on. He told me they had to burn the fields to get rid of all the old seeds, all the weeds, all the stubborn, useless shit that was choking the life out of the soil, so they could plant something new.
And that, right there, that’s the whole goddamn gospel. That’s the apocalypse I’m talking about. A quiet, deliberate, and completely necessary act of arson on the fields of your own life.
But I’m not burning this all down to plant new seeds for you, or for my kids, or for some woman in a foreign country. I’m not recropping for anyone but myself. This is a selfish, beautiful, and completely holy act of self-preservation.
You spend your whole life collecting layers. You’re a son, then you’re a husband, then you’re a father. You’re a Mormon, then you’re a millionaire, then you’re a drunk. You’re a boss, a lover, an ex-husband, a goddamn project manager. And one day, you wake up, and you’re buried under a hundred pounds of someone else’s bullshit. You’re a goddamn onion, and you’ve forgotten what the core of you even looks like.
So what do you do? You start peeling.
And this is the perfect, beautiful, and completely terrifying time for it. The last anchors have been cut. The kids, they’re grown now, off building their own beautiful, ugly, and completely predictable cages. The ex-wife, she’s no longer an adversary in a legal bar fight; she’s just a ghost in a mansion I paid for, a quiet, settled memory of a war that’s finally over. The old flames, the women I’ve touched and played with over the years, they’re all on their third or fourth marriages now, miserable, compromised, their bodies sagging under the weight of a life they settled for. The beauty that was once their currency, their weapon, it’s faded, and now they’re happy if a man will just pay half the rent for a quiet, passionless night in their bed.
My old friends, the ones who were supposed to be my brothers in arms, they’re all still running on their own little hamster wheels, stashing their nuts in their 401ks, their conversations a quiet, boring litany of stock prices and property taxes. And the elders, my own parents, they’re just popping more pills every month, a quiet, chemical truce with a body that’s already betrayed them, their doctor’s visits becoming more regular than my own bowel movements.
Everyone has moved on. Everything that was, isn’t anymore. The whole goddamn stage is empty.
And that’s not a tragedy. That’s a goddamn gift.
It’s easier to go when you have to be.
For fifteen years, I’ve been preparing for this. Fifteen years of quietly cutting the ropes, of getting my sea legs in the choppy waters of being alone. And now, the last rope has been cut for me.
So I’m burning the fields. I’m peeling the goddamn onion. I’m taking all those old identities, all those comfortable, respectable, and completely soul-crushing costumes, and I’m throwing them into the fire.
Why?
Because how the hell can you be happy if you don’t even know who you are?
That’s the question that’s been chewing on my soul in the dark, quiet hours of the morning. And that’s the question I’m going to Argentina to answer.
I’m going there to be naked.
Not just without clothes. I mean visually, spiritually, and completely naked. I want to stand on a street corner in a country where I don’t speak the language, where no one knows my name, where I have no history, no reputation, no goddamn story to live up to. I want to swipe that passport, and I want the man I was yesterday to die right there, in a quiet, fluorescent-lit room, under the bored, indifferent gaze of a customs agent.
I want to be in a raw state of mind.
I want to walk out into a new world with nothing but the man who’s left after all the layers have been peeled away. No American flag to hide behind. No title to puff out my chest with. No bank account to use as a weapon. Just me. A fifty-six-year-old man, standing in the middle of a world he doesn’t understand, with nothing but his own two hands and the quiet, ugly, beautiful truth of his own goddamn soul.
That’s the only place you can find a real point of presence. That’s the only place you can begin to answer the real question.
What is a life fully lived?
It’s a life filled with genuine meaning.
And genuine meaning isn’t something you find in a job, or a woman, or a bank account. It’s something you build, in the quiet, lonely, and beautiful wilderness of your own goddamn self, after you’ve had the courage to burn everything else to the ground.
I’m running to find myself.
This isn’t a retreat. This isn’t a vacation. And it sure as hell isn’t me running from anything anymore.
This is the last, great, and beautiful demolition project of my life.
And I’m running to the quiet, beautiful, and completely terrifying business of finally meeting the man who’s been buried underneath all the bullshit for fifty-six years.
