On feeling small and getting mugged.

I am so small. I am insignificant. I am so small. What I have is so small. What I have is nothing. What I have to offer to God..what I have to offer to the world..what I have to offer is nothing. It is my everything, but it is nothing at all. Nothing.

I feel so delicate. I feel like a knick-knack in the bottom corner of a breaking cardboard box on on moving day. I know I will break. Everyone else knows I will break. God knows I will break. This is inevitable. This goes without saying.

I walked to the sketchy gas station on the corner to buy some oil for my car. It lies on the corner of one of the worst blocks of Peoria. I was carrying a twenty dollar bill in one hand and my ipod, phone and keys in the other. A boy with shifty eyes looked me up and down and peered at the contents of my hands. I wondered off-handedly if he had a gun and even more casually, I wondered what the front page would read in tomorrow's Journal Star. Little white girl gets mugged for ipod?

Other than wishing I had worn something other than the ratty batman T-shirt if this was going to be my last day on earth, I found that I had few thoughts on the matter and even less emotion. I wondered, as he passed what had happened to my lack of fear. I've always been a bit reckless, but this was more of a genuine disinterest.

Is this development positive or negative?

On the walk home the character of Sydney Carton from the Tale of Two Cities came to mind.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

I used to be able to make myself cry on cue at this part of the book. Sydney Carton gives a little speech as he takes the place of a man condemned to death.

The most striking thing to me about the whole situation is the calmness Carton has. He is able to preform an ultimate act of bravery without flinching. I don't think it's because he was particularly brave or noble. I think it is because he had no one and nothing holding him back from death.

Hard things in life, simply put, it breaks you down. Into smaller and smaller pieces. And the knick-knack tumbles and tumbles and tumbles and tumbles and becomes sand. It's broken.

I decided something. If I had been shot, I would have bled all over the sidewalk and caused a nasty stain that would have stayed for a while. And then, in a few days people would have been enjoying various types of lunch meat at a memorial service. And then, everyone would be sad for a bit and then move along. And the globe would still turn. I just wouldn't be on it.

That's not so bad. A little lonely, but not so bad.

Maybe the lack-of-fear-of-death isn't bad. It could be pretty damn useful. I want to do far, far better things than I have ever done...