what if ...

Everyone is either searching for something or is dead. He believes this and it makes him a bit nervous, anxious, because he doesn’t know for what, whom or that which he searches. He thinks for a moment, then wonders: What if I already found it and didn’t know? This is his paranoia, his guilt, and he curses himself, again, for being so Catholic. Guilt is such a stultifying thing. Worse than paranoia. Much. So, he frees himself from both by assuming that he’s not yet found it. A lover once said to him, “All who search are not lost,” and he saw it on a t-shirt, later, which mean, of course, that it must be true. So, perhaps he’s a searcher. Perhaps that’s his calling, he thinks, wondering if everyone has a calling. He wishes he could talk with someone about this, but his friends, mostly co-workers, have families and he knows, from experience, how families usurp thinking. His phone vibrates; he keeps it on vibrate. It allows him to stop thinking, for a moment. So, he does. He can think later about it. If so.