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.

What I accomplish in life has limited meaning. It is how I live my life that is most essential. What I choose to use as a background setting for whatever my life turns out to be. What I put my hopes in and what I choose to believe is true. When I have faith in something, I create a new section within myself. And this section can then give me the guidance and the answers that I need to achieve meaning in my own life.

So what do I believe in?

Love. The unconditional caring of other beings, that we all talk of yet never seem to understand.

I used to blame love for my hurts and wounds, but it was never love that hurt me. Love does not hurt. Lust and envy, however, does. Sadly, we all tend to believe in these things as well. But that does not mean that they need to be on my horizon.

True love is an ideal — we can always do better — so it is a perfect setting for a horizon. We can get infinitely close, but it will always be ahead to drive us further.

Or perhaps I’m wrong.

But I really like the view.

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.

The world is full of possibilities, of treasures and pitfalls. I implore you to forget the latter and aim for the former, or you might find yourself going in the wrong direction altogether.

So many possibilities. So many worlds. So many futures.

Which will I live? What have I got to choose from? Is the choice even mine?

How many joys have I forsaken already, what happiness have I excluded?

And if I were born in another time? Or on another planet, or in another universe altogether?

Believe it or not, this kind of thinking actually makes me feel very secure. I suppose it is because it removes my worries about the life I actually lead, it takes focus away from here and now. I am a dreamer. At least, I was, once. Not too long ago. I haven’t dreamt all that much the past year. But I want to dream again. For without dreams, there is only here and now, and currently that’s not all that exciting and adventurous.

But through dreams, I grow. They inspire me, they guide me. I look up at them and I believe in them, and then I shape my life here and now after those dreams. I refuse to shape my life in the image of the world it takes place in, for this world is tainted by so many who have given in to it and forgotten their own dreams. I know that if I give in and believe this world to be the only right, then such will be true for me and I will never know anything else. But if I hold on to my dreams, if I hold on to the belief of other worlds better than this one.. if I keep to the hope that my life can be a little more like in those worlds and little less like lives tend to be in this one, then such can be true, and happiness will be had. Despite the suffering and the pain that exists in this world (and with which the world would very much like to adorn me, should I come to expect it).

What I’m trying to say is this: Shape your life after what you want it to be. Not what you don’t want it to be. And don’t make your life a mosaic of others’ lives. It is your life, and you decide how you want it to be. You decide the limits, the definitions, and the rights and wrongs. Do not pay heed to expectations and norms when all they bring you is suffering and confusion. Do not look to others and punish yourself for not being like them. What matters is what you think is right, and that you do those things. Nobody has the right to change what you believe in and live by. That’s all up to you, and you alone know how to do it best. That’s the very concept of life!

I clearly need to watch The Time Machine more often.

Despite that and the fact that is was December 1st, though, yesterday was a bad day. I can tell the bad ones from the good ones from the very moment I wake up; on the bad ones that moment is typically two hours after I wanted to wake up, and also two hours before I manage to get out of bed. Also it’s always cloudy and gray outside. I can still feel good on a bad day, through effort, using music, movies and art. But if I venture outside I will risk interacting with other people in a manner that might make me feel at a lack of social abilities, and I might lose whatever good mood I have in the blink of an eye and exchange it with grinding anxiety. So on bad days I tend to stay at home.

Today was another bad day, with a sky covered by homogenous rainclouds. Yet it’s been quite a special day, too. Even though nothing happened. Here’s how it went:

I wake up just before 10 am, by my wristwatch ringing from atop a shelf. I let it ring for about fifteen minutes before I bother rubbing my eyes so that I can stare at the ceiling and try to become more awake. Finally getting up to turn off the alarm, I grab my cellphone and lay back down in bed. After listening to music from my cell for half an hour without falling asleep, I finally decide to get up. I turn on my computer and the lights on my christmas tree and fetch some breakfast.

Having realized it’s a bad day, I decide I need to do something pleasing. I decide to check the deviantART favourites of an artist whose work I recently added to my own favourites. I’ve realized it’s one of the best ways to find new favourable works. I find a whole hoard of amazing photos. Have an example:

So many of them are so new and unique, and unexpected! I find myself thinking things like “is Romania really that beautiful?” “Does ice really form like that?” “Do forests like that really exist?” Overall my mind feels expanded.

However, I still feel unsettled and unable to focus on doing something productive. Then I remember how taking walks has done wonders for my perspective before, so I decide to do that. But it’s not exactly Spring these days; the sun is already down, and so I walk through the darkness on raggedly ice-covered ground through a constant drizzle, with the clouds looming heavily over me. The light of the city illuminates the nearby clouds, but that light fades into merciless blackness over the forest.

I’m not in a lonely mood, so that doesn’t repel me. I enter the forest and choose paths I haven’t gone before. And then, whilst slipping downhill on the icy ground, my mind lectures itself and says: “honestly, already the emotion of this experience is far stronger than many of your childhood memories!” I realize the truth in that as I look at some mist rising above a nearby lamp post and notice that I can smell the forest. That makes me smile and gives me hope. Not all memories come from my childhood. New memories can still be created, memories that might even surpass those. I feel I’ve discovered something wise, but then I also think of this quote:

“It’s far easier to write a hundred essays on philosophy, than to practice one single principle.”

There you have me. I’ve philosophized a lot about different things the past years. Now I feel I know quite well what’s right. But that does in no way mean that I follow that philosophy. I used to think myself capable of it, but that is an overestimation. I always try to follow the wisdom I believe in, and through that I might one day manage to practice some of it. But I am merely human, and humans are bound by habit, routine and psychology. It makes the road long. Excitingly, life is, too!

The road I walk on treads close to an open stadium where, seemingly, a match of ice hockey is being played. I stray from it and walk and among the dark trees on the other side until I meet a river. I follow the river to a crossing covered by so much ice I’m not really sure what’s ground and what’s river. When I reach a small nearby lake, I’m far from the nearest lamp post. I walk out on a long wodden pier and gaze into the surrounding landscape. Two words come to me: ‘bleak’ and ‘depressing’. Better can hardly be said about the sight of it. Even the hundreds of crows, now nesting in the forest, are hiding away from the cold and the dark. Still, what I think is this: “There’ll be a new Spring next year, just you wait.”

Walking back, I find myself feeling soothingly detached from the world. Or rather, from my own routines and common emotions. I walk past buildings and places where I’ve walked several times a day for over a year, but my mind is not at all set like it usually is when I walk there. No, right this moment, due to the unusual atmosphere, the world is another. I keep my eyes on the sidewalk ahead of me, to keep from slipping. But the ice on the sidewalk sparkles as if to entertain me. And I am entertained, and pleased. I get to live in another world for a moment.

Back home, I feel inspired and so I write this entry. After it’s finished, I prepare some dinner, and then I watch Edward Scissorhands for the first time in many years.

I remember when magic was a day-to-day business for me. I’m talking about my childhood, of course. Sure, you could say that whatever magic I imagined was just that; imagination. It never existed, I was only fooling myself. But then I’d just shake my head, because that’s not the point. I still know magic.

Because the real magic is the moment itself, when magic and wonder really does seem real. Magic is when you can actually picture a world where heroes always win, where deceases and accidents don’t exist. Magic is when you really feel like there’s something more out there, something wondrous and curious and impossible. And magic is when the real world allows wondrous things of other worlds to happen here, too.

The last kind will happen only if you believe it can. If you don’t, the same might still happen, but you will discard it at coincidence, and your world will forever be boring.

I really look forward to the day I’ll be able to make magic happen for someone else.