Tales and Journeys

This is the inconvenient truth  that sometimes, bad things happen, and if you don’t realize it, it will only get worse. Sometimes we even have to save ourselves from ourselves. That is when we must stand up to our own feelings and relieve ourselves of involuntary torments. That, or live our lives in fear and distress.

Throughout life, people bond. Not only with eachother, but perhaps even more so with all they experience. We bond with memories, with emotions, habits, norms and with ourselves.

Bonds form, and bonds break. Many break because they were weak, and they make space for greater bonds, and we do not even notice. Meanwhile, some bonds are much stronger, and will become a background for our life for a long time to come. New bonds will be made on top of these strong bonds, and rely on them to hold.

They do not always hold. Even strong bonds can break; and whether they connected us to other people, to a daily life we used to have, to our place of birth or even to a scent or a color — the feeling is much the same. The difference lies only in the nature of the bond and what we can do about it. Naturally, the death of someone we know is hardest because we have the strongest bonds with them, and nothing can bring them back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The modern opinion is cynical towards the world, expecting to recieve no compassion or meaning — because after all, the universe is a faceless machine, its gears the cold logic of physics and probability. I battle this opinion under its own terms, showing that emotions like love cannot merely be explained by their apparent purposes, but must have been present since the conception of this world.

Humanity. We live and we persist because it is inevitable. In this world of change and peril, only that which persists, lives.

Our highly developed consciousness, our imagination, made us persist. Our hope in better days, in great wonder, made us persist. Because of them, we still exist to this day.

And because they made us persist, these parts have persisted in us. That is the only reason we have them. If the world had challenged us in different ways, we would have developed different abilities. In another world, we might be unable to learn to swim, climb trees… or feel happy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout my life, I have often been deviant. There are things I never understood, interests I never shared, phases I never visited. Luckily, I didn’t mind much being left alone, to do the things I wanted the way I liked.

Still, I have often contemplated on having missed out on several years of my life. Years I could’ve learned what all the others did, years I could’ve understood them and the world better. Instead of being alone in my room, I could’ve been in the company of good friends, doing something we all liked doing together. And in the presence of these good friends, I could’ve grown more as a human being.

But no. Read the rest of this entry »

Artists make the world into something it’s not, giving people false hope and wrong impressions of what the world is. At least, that is what some might say. How do you defend such an argument, if even possible? I try to locate the true meaning behind art, finding that it is not to illustrate places and events, but to explore the human soul.

Photographers find the exact angle and composition where the beauty is the clearest, and then they doll up the scene in Photoshop afterwards, making it into something that can’t even be found. Writers also give us prime examples and leave out the mundanity that truly fills our lives. And musicians hog the well-used beats and harmonies of the rare moments in life. Art, in effect, makes us disappointed in the world.

The world has no beauty. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t fall down into ignorance when there’s something that needs your attention. Doing nothing is also a choice, and sometimes the worst one, but oh, so easy to make.

The world is exactly what we make it into.

Anything we choose to nourish, it will grow.

And anything we choose to neglect, it will wither.

Neglect — and the loss is leads to — is the easiest to accomplish. It requires no hard work, it needs no grand plans and ideals. Do nothing, and withering will come to the world all on its own. Let it stay, and it will set root. Rely on it, and it will grow.

Read the rest of this entry »

The leashes, the leashes! Sometimes, and only sometimes, I can feel the tar around me, submerging me. Seperating me from myself. Sometimes, I feel I could break free of these restraints, these phony traits. The human shell.

And I would stop all I do wrong: all I am expected to do, but that I deep down know I shouldn’t. All for the sake of comfort, I risk resignation, I risk forgetting, I risk dying in life. I would stop it, and I would travel. To rediscover the forsaken, remember the forgotten. I would travel to visit my soul.

Not to find a path. Just to walk.

For some time, I have feared the loss of parts of myself. I have worried that central things like my imagination, persistency and sense of wonder are waning. “Am I growing up?” I’ve thought. Has my admit of defeat in love brought upon me irreversible changes, that strip me of the things I thought was the real me?

Time and thought can be dangerous tools. I love it when things make sense, so as time passes and sense doesn’t present itself, my mind paints sense. Just like those speculations. As more time passes, I’ve thought about it so much that it’s irrelevant whether I believe it’s true or not. It’s become part of my horizon, and my involuntary trust in it will make it true. I daresay that this really is how some of us grow up.

Read the rest of this entry »

I can never reach the horizon.

But it creates a heck of a good view being just where it is.

Without the horizon, I do not know which way to go, and even if I go the right way, I will wonder why I did so, without any sense of purpose.

Here I am again, talking about attitudes towards life. I lost faith for a while, but now I’m back. I believe I created something of myself through this journal, and leaving would be forsaking that. Now I choose not to.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are sometimes afraid of ourselves, conforming to what feels safe just to lessen our anxieties, our fears of the unknown, however good.

Why do we all hinder ourselves? Why do we hold back, in favor of being gray? Is is because we are afraid of loss?

Even when we know what can be, how life can be, why oh why do we still do nothing? Why do I do nothing?

Humans can be so special. Relationships can be so special. But we.. no, I. I am so afraid. I cannot hide behind mankind on this one. It’s childish, it’s introverted, it’s straight-out stupid, but I am afraid of letting anyone close. All my life, I have kept more distance from others than I can honestly say I’m happy with.

Why doesn’t matter. Whys are not just excuses, they are shields; shields of lies that you can hide behind and believe it’s okay that you’re doing something wrong. Psychology is an elaborate shield that lets us be gray with a clean conscience. I will not ponder on why I am afraid and distant, and then be happy with the reason I find most likely. I will not be happy with being like this for the rest of my life, with not being as I think people ought to be.

Difference starts somewhere. And then it spreads. We would all do best not to resist the kind of change that this movie inspires in us.

Why ever do we care, when all the castles we build, fall down eventually? Perhaps the point isn’t a happy ending, but a memorable adventure.

Life isn’t fair. Life hurts, stings, cripples. Life is a bitch and you can’t deny it. All our fights will be in vain, all effort will be erased, all will fall back to mercilessness. Cold logic is the way of it all, and cynicism is the way to accept it. There is no other option.

So goes the words of a dead man.

So what if resistance is futile? So what if there can never be a paradise on earth? So what if good things don’t last? At least they’re good while they do. It’s not the end result that matters, but what happened underway.

Read the rest of this entry »