The Taxman Cometh

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." – Ben Franklin. As I’m gathering paper work for a meeting with my accountant on Friday and reading Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude, Mr. Franklin’s 18^th century wisdom is becoming clearer in my 21^st century reality.

There are things we’d like to think we’re sure of: our talents, the love someone has for us and the fact that our life is unfolding exactly as it should.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to shatter certainty. Just a few thoughts and a wild imagination and certainty becomes just as uncertain as certainty about anything really is.

We put our certainty in religion so that we have some sense of that which makes none at all. Imagine, our need to have explanations is so deep that we cling to fabrications we are willing to believe even when there’s no explanation for the fabrication itself. And don’t get me wrong, though I’m not particularly religious, the believing seeps into your unconscious becoming a part of your psyche whether you like it or not.

When I was 9, I told my dad that people created religion because it was nicer to believe in G-d than to believe we evolved from apes. A true man of science, I don’t recall him ever being more proud. I don’t know what I actually thought at the time. For that matter, I don’t know what I actually believe now. Certainly my father is not a believer. My mother on the other hand still tells me to go into a church and light a candle when I’m feeling down. Sometimes I actually do.

It was also clearly articulated at a story seminar I attended the last few days, that the only person you will ever truly know in this life is yourself. Some people take this truth in stride. For some reason it crushes me. I don’t care about knowing many people, just one…

A Bogart-Bergman connection. A deep unshakable knowing that the person you hold in your heart was meant for you. But, more importantly, that the person you hold in your heart feels the same way. Well…I’ve already admitted in the past to being a romantic, what can I say. Only that the realization of never really being able to know another human being does become more and more of an inescapable certainty the older you get.

But there are moments. Moments where you feel you might know something…someone. And that possibility keeps you going. There is nothing I hold more dear than that…the possibility. The possibility that makes death and taxes easier to bear.