Why Do You Drink?

Sometimes we need to be saved from the emotional turmoil that is caused by the disease called "life". Or perhaps that is what we have always done and will always do. We fill our days with activities that take our minds off the fact that we are gradually decaying blobs of biological material. Work, hobbies, TV, movies, drinking, eating, sports, exercise, raising kids, and on and on it goes as we endlessly look for new stuff to fill our days. Like ants, we mill about building monuments to our existence in hopes of what? That we will be remembered by the ants that follow in the next generation? That some big fat bastard doesn't come along and stomp on our anthill?

It was Thomas Wolfe that said

Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.

Maybe I need some psychological counseling, but hear me out for at least the next few sentences of mindless rambling. The eternal question to be answered is "Why is man born to suffer and die?". I think that all of the activities that we fill our lives with are simply denial of this existential question. So moving on past denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, I am simply jumping right to the final and logical stage of acceptance. There is great comfort in that ... acceptance.

I feel that I must end this depressing discussion with a song that is filled with a cheery view of existential angst by that prince of philosophers, Hank Williams Junior

Why do you drink? Why do you roll smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?
Over and over everybody makes my predictions.
So if I get stoned I'm just carrying on an old family tradition.