Compliment? Insult? Sad commentary?

“Why are you so full of life?”
What a thing to ask! (and curious how it seems almost synonymous with the age-old query, repeated like a mantra of disbelief: “Why do you run?” I imagine the answers aren’t terribly dissimilar). It’s not every day that such a hefty question mark gets tossed in one’s path and demands a response before granting passage. Some form of the immediate, pithy retort – “why are you so devoid of it?” – never made it past the repartee censors, because they, along with the wit manufacturers, cliché re-packagers, and everyone else lined up along the mental assembly lines, were in such total shock, so utterly flabbergasted. “Why are you so full of life?” I suppose it ought to be taken as a compliment – let’s face it, there are many worse things to be full of – but any brief rush of validation was eclipsed by the somber, chilling implications of this question asked so earnestly, enviously, and with exhasperation, bewilderment and – do I detect? – the merest drop or two of home-brewed sneering condescension, as if being filled with life is the province of children, an attitude best left chained to the playground. Where does an answer even begin?
I am full of life because filling myself with anything else has never held much appeal?
I am full of life to compensate for your abundant lack of it (you’re welcome!)?
I am full of life because, let’s face it, a little cosmic cheerfulness – not to be confused with Hallmark-brand happiness, mind you – is the only way to get by, and the beginning of courage in the face of suffering?

Ah yes, “courage in the face of suffering.” “Cheerfulness.” “A sense of humor.” Easy attitudes to keep hung in the closet, clean and pressed, when a life has been so free of tragedy, when suburban insulation has kept all the real nasty slings and arrows out, distilled suffering to the lessons of a history book. An existence that fosters and feeds its own tragedy – the tragedy of torpor, as documented on This American Life. To demand that one approach life with cheer, humor, warmth, love, and the inevitable dissolving of the self that follows…is that real philosophy? Or simply the limp and flaccid components of a hollow imitation, fertilized by (self-) indulgence?

Somehow, in a syntactical blitzkrieg, this got invaded by question marks. Overwhelmed by pseudo-musings and the armies of questions they allow to proliferate. All the other punctuation has fled the posting, scattered to the proverbial hills (somewhere in the margins I would imagine) become a mass of refugees streaming towards the nearest instruction manual or boarding a grammatical ship for someplace where sentences have an end and questions have answers. And well they should flee, for let's face it: how could periods, commas (well okay, the commas are doing okay too; the insurgent guerilla force waging decentralized war on the tyrannical ?s) and exclamation points (really just periods with pretentious hats) hope to stand up to the wicked sickle of query's emblem, defend against that fatal curve, a page out of the Reaper's book (or at least, a bit of punctuation from that page. Though the Reaper's book would probably be more full stops than anything else).

Oh Question Mark Marchers!