I lie in bed, my eyes are closed.

My over-caffeinated heart is beating, “Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud” in the depths of a chest that will not rest.

This is the fruit that has grown from the coffee after a joyous evening, reminding me that not all that is pleasant is desirable and not all that is enjoyable yields longer term joy.

It doesn’t help that the sound of laughter repeats from outside my window, innocuous at best at 10am but odious at 1am – a one digit separation, but a universe apart.

The judgmental part of me considers the inconsiderate neighbors and their inconsiderate family members just casually laughing away with no thought for anyone whom they may affect, and somehow in a flash, it dawns upon me:

This is the nature of true evil.

Evil, in all likelihood, is not callous nor is it particularly malicious.

It’s just the result of doing what feels right at a particular time, feeling that one is justified, with no deeper meaning underpinning it.

I don’t suppose that my neighbors have a particular wish for me to experience sleep deprivation. No, rather they wish merely to enjoy their weekend. Does it mean that I am unaffected by what they are doing? No, by no means. I certainly am affected. That is why I am lying in bed right now, talking to myself.

I think this characterizes most evil in this world. The consequence of people simply just following their self-interest in ways that they justify.

“I was so tired the entire week.”

“I need to celebrate.”

“We’re all together right now. Why shouldn’t we make as much noise as we want?”

“It’s just for the weekend. Surely they will understand.”

But I don’t.

I don’t think that there is anything particularly noble, wonderful, or celebratory about this whole coincidence of things because it is an unambiguous negative to be awake at 1am, but if there is anything that I do know, it’s that at the very least, this harangue has made me think and this thinking is of the somewhat beneficial sort – the sort that makes me hope that it will remain as something when I wake up in the morning rather than something ephemeral, passing, gone in the puddle’s evaporation from the sunlight of consciousness.

That’s the kind of thing that I’d like, I guess, from this next era of my life. If it’s vague, know that it’s not coincidence. The thing is an era where things become tangible, they have a form – where whispers and thoughts come to life in the concrete, the accepted, the things not rejected out of hand simply because I hadn’t planned them out well.

So here I am, wondering to myself, in the midst of this noisome disturbance, praying for sleep. Will there be a time when every single thought that comes from my head will find itself in the form of a living memory that stands the test of time, even as I resist my urge to edit, reframe, consider again?

As I pray for the evil to come to an end, these are the thoughts that my soul will rest with as I pass from the conscious waking world into the velvet room of dreams.