I used to have hopes. I used to go through my life as if it was not quite the life that I wanted yet. I used to think of myself as being in the process of building pieces of my own life, more or less preparing for it, or at least for something more substantial. Often, I was learning skills that I could use later, acquiring knowledge that I would think of later, meeting people that I would have good times with later, working so that I would have a good job later, filling myself with books, movies, music I could remember later, collecting and storing things that might be useful later… I’m probably exaggerating a bit, but there certainly was a vague feeling that the main course was not there yet, it was only a starter.
It was unpleasant when I realized that I was postponing my life to a future that may never happen. It’s never comfortable to drown your own beliefs: you feel like you’re attached to them, so you’re drowning yourself. We are extremely convincing at telling ourselves the stories we want to hear, and we believe in them with great appetite. Society enables this behaviour, encourages these delusions intensively: modern life keeps pushing us to follow our dreams, to be ambitious and persistent, to plan and succeed… And the infinite options and temptations that we are offered in every corner of our lives, we live in a gigantic and schizophrenic ad for a different life than ours. We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like. And sometimes these people are ourselves.
Needless to say, this is not very healthy. Life is here and now, and it might not be as glamorous as on tv or wherever, but it is fucking real. When one gets rid of the din and finally pays attention to it, this can be a nice experience. Everything slows down; one suddenly perceives the quiet breath of the life that always exists everywhere around; different sounds and different views pop up; the unassuming beauty of multiple tiny things reveals itself, as if by accident; it can almost feel like the soul is healing; and it all hangs in the delicate balance of an instant.
Well, anyway… So yeah, I’m getting rid of a bunch of delusions that I used to entertain. At some point I realized that now that I have no false hopes anymore… I’m just hopeless. It’s a bit sad, but curiously not too much.