I spent eighty years looking for my glasses. Every. Single. Day. A full-blown emergency. I’d yell at the walls, kick the furniture, blame the cat, and call out to the “God” I only remembered existed when I needed free parking or a miracle cure. I checked drawers, under the bed, inside holy books I’d never actually read. And every single time, the damn things were sitting right on top of my head. Smiling at me.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s just Wednesday.
That’s also pretty much how I lived my entire life in this “Prison.”

At twenty, I treated this body like a stolen car I had no intention of returning. I filled the tank with cheap beer, greasier food, and spectacular amounts of denial. I drove it at 120 mph with no seatbelt, no map, and absolutely no plan. I thought I was the main character. Untouchable. The kind of guy who ages well.
What I didn’t know was that the body was a very quiet, very patient accountant. It said nothing. It just sat in the corner, writing everything down. Every all-nighter. Every “I’ll start Monday.” Every cigarette smoked ironically. Every meal that was technically food but spiritually a cry for help.
It kept the receipts. All of them.
Then sixty arrived — unannounced, obviously, because it has no manners — and the “Prison” started collecting its dues. My knees began making sounds that had no business coming from a human being. My back filed a formal complaint every time I sneezed. My body, which I had spent four decades cheerfully vandalizing, looked me dead in the eye and slid the bill across the table.
It was a long bill.
And the hypocrisy? Oh, I was a decorated champion. Monday through Friday, I was the full package — judging strangers, hoarding things I didn’t need, holding grudges like they were savings bonds, and generally behaving like a man who had never once considered that other people were also, technically, people.
Then Sunday morning would roll around. I’d put on the good shirt. I’d walk into the temple, breathe in the thick, sweet smell of the incense, and listen to the bells chime. I’d put on my “holy face” — you know the one — and try to negotiate with the Landlord. I figured if I bowed low enough or put enough spare change in the box, He wouldn’t notice the “property damage” I’d done to my soul all week. Basically, I was a man trying to return a broken appliance without the receipt and hoping the bells would drown out my conscience.
I wanted a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for a soul I’d been dragging through the mud since childhood.
The Landlord, to His credit, never laughed. At least not where I could hear it.
Everyone talks about “Reincarnation” like it’s a confirmed booking. “Don’t stress! Better body next time!” Sure. Wonderful. Except nobody has actually seen the brochure. Nobody has the confirmation email. We are all, every single one of us, betting our entire existence on a sequel while completely fumbling the original.
I arrived in this cell alone, small, and screaming — which, looking back, was the most honest I would ever be. I spent the next eight decades filling it up. Money. Status. Opinions nobody asked for. Expensive furniture I was afraid to sit on. A carefully curated collection of things I thought would finally make me feel like enough.
They didn’t.
I mismanaged the rental property spectacularly and handed it back to Nature at the end in genuinely poor condition. Dented. Scratched. Engine shot. One knee completely done. The kind of return that makes the landlord just stare at the damage deposit form and sigh.
The Warden opened the door last night.
I left the keys on the counter. I didn’t make a scene. What would be the point? I couldn’t take the furniture. I couldn’t take the money, the status, or the grudges — all that decorating, all those years, and you leave exactly as empty-handed as you arrived. Same size. Same nothing.
I stepped out of the skin. The bones. The creaking, complaining, exhausted joints. I walked out of eighty years like walking out of a coat you’ve been wearing so long you forgot it wasn’t you.
And here’s the part that breaks me. Even now.
The moment I stepped outside — without the foggy eyes, without the ego sitting on my chest like a suitcase — I saw it.

The world I had been living in the entire time.
The wind moving through the leaves wasn’t “weather.” It was music. Quiet, patient music that had been playing every single day, whether I was listening or not. The smell of rain on hot pavement — the thing I spent decades calling an inconvenience, the thing that ruined plans and frizzed my hair — it was a miracle. A small, ordinary, absolutely heartbreaking miracle.
I had spent eighty years staring at the cracks in the floor, complaining about the size of my cell, negotiating about the rent. I was so committed to being a prisoner that I never once looked up at the window.
I was living in a palace.
A ridiculous, excessive, embarrassingly beautiful palace. And I spent most of it arguing with the walls.
I missed it. Not some of it — most of it. The sunsets I drove past. The people I half-listened to. The quiet mornings I spent worrying about things that never happened. I missed it because I was too busy. Too distracted. Too convinced that real life was just around the corner, waiting for me to finally get everything sorted out.
And the glasses?
They were there the whole time. Right there, on my face, perfectly in place — just waiting for me to stop running long enough to look.
I wish I’d stopped sooner.
God, I really wish I’d stopped sooner.