The Paradigm

I sit at parks, watching my kids play and texting people who never text back. I’m dying on the inside—dying for human contact, for adult contact.

The illusion is real: a phone full of contacts and social media just a swipe away. It creates a false sense of comfort, a feeling of connection that just leaves me vapid and alone. I suspect these are things all single parents think about and do; we just never talk about it. We post pictures and witticisms that seem to prove our lives are full, and for a moment, it masks the void.

So many times, I’ve thought the universe was aligned my way, or that I was aligned with it. All those ideas have failed. Either there is no pattern to the chaos, or it’s on a scale I just can’t see.

From my limited perspective, it just looks like noise.

When the search for meaning is over, the only thing left is to just be. Maybe that’s the paradigm?