This life keeps passing, the events unfold, day after day, week after week, all the same. The children get older, the tiny gods of our religion. The faces in the mirror get subtly more lined with each year. Doubts creep in, anxieties, “is this all there is?” 

There was a point to all this, once upon a time. There was a belief that a life was a success, a failure, or mediocre, and the habits practiced would yield uncommon results. Yet, that’s not how it feels. It feels endless, futile, a re-enactment of a drama from another time. 

“Daddy? What’s wrong?” she asks. A head shake, a pat on her head. “Nothing, sweetheart, it’s nothing.” 

These are the same thoughts and feelings that millions have had before; this is cold comfort, of course. A burst of inspiration, a parting of the clouds, a transformation could change everything, but it doesn’t. Mundanity chokes the miraculous. Nothing disproves the assumptions of despair and nihilism. 

She takes my hand and holds it.