If there is one theme that threads its way through the fevered masses here on OS it is this: Life can be brutal.

Yes, indeed, life can be exceedingly brutal. Right off the top of my head, I could point you to more stories of tragedy on Open Salon than you could shake a stick at. But, I won’t. Because that’s not what this post is about. This isn’t a rolling review of all the tragedies, terribleness, and tussles that have befallen those in our midst. You won’t have to look far if you go looking for proof of what I tell you. It’s there – in beautiful verse, glorious prose and breathtaking artwork. We are a talented lot here. Tragic, but talented.

I’ve thought a lot about this of late, particularly since Grif outed all of us as the Geritol set a few weeks ago. According to the comment I left on Grif’s blog, in which I mistakenly referred to him as Cranky Cuss (damn memory, can’t count on it for anything), I read his post immediately after posting my latest musings about that devil-dawg depression that lurks among OS members like a slinky cat, twining itself between us, in and out of our legs, tripping us up on many the occasion. Robin Sneed and I seem to have emerged from the bowels of crazy-making depression at about the same time, according to our very similar posts, as did lschmoopie.

So, those thoughts have been lurking in the back of my mind for the last couple of weeks as I’ve browsed around reading blogs and making comments. And I started to marvel at what a resilient bunch we all are. The collective load of misery that has been endured by the good folks who make up my regular reading list (and a good many whom I read occasionally, too) would choke a goat. Okay, that’s not the analogy I’m going for, but you get my drift. It’s that damn memory thing again, I tell you. But I digress.

Back to my original premise. Life can be brutal. Apparently it is progressively brutal, if the lives of my faves on OS are any indication. I can just see you shaking your heads and saying, “Wow, great news, Kim. Thanks for the uplifting newsflash.” But, wait. It gets better, I think.

Follow along with me here. If my theory is correct and life really does get progressively more brutal with the passing years, as indicated by way too darn many wonderful people who are completely undeserving of such brutishness, then it also appears that life’s brutality peaks at a certain point and things begin to level out. Here again, I use the writings of some of Open Salon’s finest as proof for my theory. From what I’ve read, here on these very pages, there comes a definite uptick in the serendipitous nature of life after it has had its way with us for years. It would appear that once Life (with a capital L for emphasis) has thoroughly boxed our ears, upended us, made us crazy and generally put us through hell on earth, we come to a plateau where Life is, if not gentle, then at least not so boorish.

Maybe (and I suspect this is as true as anything else I’ve postulated here) it’s not so much that Life decides to lay off, as it is that we’ve learned a thing or two through all our trials and tribulations. And having survived some of the worst that Life can throw at us, we come to a place where we decide it’s not US, it’s just life – in all it’s brutal glory – and if we just keep walking, we will walk ourselves through it. I can say this, having thrown myself down in the muck and mire many a time when Life was being mean to me. If I’d had the presence of mind to just keep walking instead of lying down, well, maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t have been so horrible. We’ll never know because I didn’t keep walking. I was tired. I think we all get tired at about this point in life. You know, the Geritol stage of life. We’ve had that cheery, smile-plastered-on-our faces attitude for so damn many years by the time we reach the you-know-what stage, that we just can’t do it any more. So we start to take it all to heart and it hurts and we get tired. T.I.R.E.D.

Then, I think we realize that we have to get back up and keep going because, after all, what else are we going to do? Just lay there and let Life kick the ever-loving daylights out of us forever? No. So, we get up. And we start dusting ourselves off and looking around and, lo and behold, what do we find? We find a whole bunch of Geritolers just like us who are sporting bruises and cuts and walking on crutches and even some of us are on life-support – metaphorically-speaking, of course. There’s a certain comfort in that, so we all loll around there for a while, sharing war stories and giving each other hugs and pats on the back.

And then… we get on with it. There’s the uptick. We get on with it. We do what we have always done and we start to make things happen again and we realize that we have years to go before we sleep.

And hey, we’re not tired anymore. Who knew?