Dead-End Living

:by Hugo Venegas

Have you ever gotten up early in the morning on a particular day, simply to discover that your life was tirelessly and meaninglessly running around circles at a dead-end cult-de-sac? You are spinning your wheels and spending expensive fuel but going nowhere.

What makes the journey so much painful is that you want to get out of the downward spiral, but you just don't know how. You want to make forward progress. You want to ride down satisfaction Avenue, but you simply don’t know how.

Traveling on a dead-end road stifles the spirit. It weakens the heart muscles of joy. You want solutions. You are tired and want to get out of a dead end situation and into joy filled situation – yet, you may not know how go get back on the right road.

We have all been down dead-end road. We have the t-shirts, the baseball caps and the tattoos to prove the fact – that - we've all been there. We awaken to see a face in the mirror that many years ago we knew and loved. Vitality has slowly leaked out of our tired bodies and weary hearts. We are consumed with boring chores around the home and the lifeless repetition of tasks at the office, which cannot lead us to close the deal. The many calls and promises that can't land us a sale. We've all been down dead-end road.

We may hate to admit it, but for some, we feel that intimacy in our relationships has become mundane. What frightens us is not the distance itself, but the fear that deep inside of us we have lost the gumption to fight for love.

We see our children grow up and riding the bus of life with joy and big dreams; and the meaninglessness dripping out of our souls make us cynics of their optimism. We are just stuck on dead-end road.

The single person has spent so many lonely nights, that he has given up the fight of hoping that better days or better prospects will soon come. So he has learned to compromise and do the unthinkable – to go bed with loneliness – a friend without benefits.

We have all been down that road and have met many interesting people who were so different than us but all the same - were all victims of disappointment. We have all been left waiting for a financial bailout that never came and left us broke in our despair. We have seen the mountaintop of our dreams buried by the mounting debt of our credit card spending.

Some get so weary of the emptiness that they choose to pull the plug on life. Others choose the path of narcotics – and find the best way to still the voice of hope. Some chose to take God to court – to sue Him for what appears to be a cruel joke played on them on the cosmic stage of life. Yet, there are those of us who sense that deep within, there is a still voice - which softly speaks in the boisterous noise of cult-de-sac living – "there is more love, peace, and joy ahead." We want to believe. We want to see. We want to feel it, we want to be convinced that God has magnanimous stimulus package pregnant with goods heading our way. But we just don't know the way out.

We lack the desire and the passion to pursue the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We believe it's there – we long, we wait, we hope, and we pray for it. We want the wisdom to know our way out of dead-end living. We want direction so we can make our way to our pot of gold.

I wait in silence. I sip my cold two dollar tea. I breathe in deeply and from somewhere deep within, but unknown – I make a decision to pack my bags. I drive away from my imprisoning dead-end-cult-de-sac living – heading somewhere – who knows where, but not here.