"I'm alive, but I don't know what it means"

You'll reference my post from 7/25/09.

I was just listening to "Have you Ever Seen the Rain" by CCR and got to thinking back.

12/27/06. I was flying back to the west coast on a late night Delta flight following a brief visit home for Christmas. I had moved to Seattle about a month before, but at the time that I moved there, I knew that I'd be back home in a month or so anyway, if only for a few days.

Anyway, I was sitting on the flight listening to some music on the flight, it was one of those Delta flights with the TVs in the seat back so you get some entertainment. I found "Have you Ever Seen the Rain" in the music menu and listened to it a few times.

That flight was one of the only times in my life that I've felt true desperation. Sitting on that airplane, looking at nothing but darkness out the window, I could feel myself panic. What have I gotten myself into, moving out here? Did I make the right decision? What's going to happen now?

Those moments are funny, but only after the fact. As disconcerting as it was to face so much uncertainty (and I couldn't help but feel it was appropriate that I couldn't see anything out of the windows), I look back and think about how alive that made me feel.

I've heard that the real addiction with gamblers isn't winning or making money or picking games right. I hear that the real addiction is that feeling that comes in the waning seconds before the fate of your bet is determined. The joy, the angst, the disgust, the regret, the happiness. I hear that the side doesn't matter, it's all about feeling those feelings on high.

In some ways, I can see that. Last summer I visited the Belmont race track on Long Island one Saturday afternoon. I didn't bet or lose enough money to really "feel" a loss or win, but betting any amount of money on anything makes that thing so much more interesting. The last race there, I had bet a trifecta. $10 or $20, I can't remember. A trifecta is a bet where the top three horses are chosen, in order. You would tell the teller at the window "Next race here, $10 trifecta on 1,3, and 7" and that means that you're betting $10 that horse #1 will win, horse #3 will place and horse #7 will show. The payouts are pretty good, depending on the odds of each horse. For my bet, I figured it would have paid well in excess of $100. Anyway, as the horses were coming down the backstretch, the three that I'd chosen for my trifecta were among the four leaders, and all four were bunched in tight. For a split second, the board showed my exact bet as the top as the horses neared the finish line. I was going bannanas. Standing up, I was screaming at the top of my lungs "HOLD IT, HOLD IT, HOLD IT". I mean, I was yelling so loud and hard that my chest hurt. So hard that I became dizzy after I stopped. Unfortunately, the horses didn't hold it, and I wound up losing my bet. But at that moment and the moments that followed, I understood how gamblers get hoooked. It's hard to forget the rush of feeling alive, the feeling of being so heavily invested in an outcome over which you have no control.

Obviously, the feeling on that flight and the feeling at Belmont are different in that of the former, once I hit the ground and made sense of the gravity of it all, I could, to a large degree, control how happy I would be. So maybe control, or lack thereof, isn't what gives me the feeling of being alive. Maybe it's the complete uncertainty of a situation and the awareness of the ramifications of the outcome. Maybe it is angst and questioning that gives me that feeling, rather than the outcome itself.

Who knows? But that's your update for now.