I was with one of my friends the other day when she suddenly proclaimed that she had RLS. I looked over at her. “Since when did you decide that you have restless leg syndrome?” I inquired. She made a face at me and replied, “Not restless leg syndrome. Restless life syndrome.”
While she was just trying to be witty, I can’t help but feel sometimes that I am simply waiting for my life to begin, that I am happy with how things are but still crave some form of change all the same. It doesn’t have to be anything major; I find joy in things that others find boring and try to see the sunshine.
Something we discussed in economics this semester is why we have so many different brands of the same product, from toothpaste to laundry detergent. More choices lead to higher prices, but consumers are willing to sacrifice because they like variety and preferences are strong. We get the most satisfaction from picking what we like while having the option to change our minds. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll go for Colgate instead of Aquafresh.
I have great difficulty defining the word artist and what constitutes art. Anything can be turned into an art and pulled far from the general sense of music, painting, and similar connotations associated with it. Does having some kind of skill make you artistic if you are serene in the way you go about presenting it? Perhaps you are able to ignite a flame within someone’s heart or build relationships with people who have been forsaken.
We all have at least one talent, whether we know it or not. Hence, I believe we are all artists.
I think above all else, I would enjoy taking a trip inside my head. To pilot a rocket between the crevices, picking out the abstractions and watching the processes. If there is anything I should know best, it is my own mind, but I am oblivious to its inner workings. It would be fun.
It turns out, my dear, that I am digging my own grave. You see it there, just off into the distance? From here it looks like a mere indentation; a trick of the light, nothing more. I assure you, it sinks deep into the earth. In my satchel I carry a rope so that I can climb out after an arduous day of digging, while looking out for yellow-spotted lizards. (I jest.)
I apologize dearly for my shortcomings, but I do not understand at present your look of consternation. There is a puzzled look in your eye, as if you do not know how to interpret my words. Do not tell me to stop, sweetheart. I have a head start, certainly, for many years have elapsed in my case. You have an illustrious future ahead of you, as I thought I did for too long of a period. I lived in a fantasy. Illusion became my reality.
How hypocritical this is! For you to tell me to cease, to destroy all the progress I have made.
Why live in ignorance when it is a universal knowledge that our breath will cease, that our bodies will disintegrate back into the soil and start anew? Some people desire this union with the earth, while others walk away. Feel free to move in another direction, but perhaps when I am here, perhaps afterward, you will return. A scratch in the dirt already exists now, not far from here.
We live only to die.
The sun was descending into the clouds, marking the end of day-dreams and the start of night-reveries. I stopped once on my journey, wanting to check my face against the glass to make sure I did not appear as tuckered I felt, though it made no sense in the darkness why my fellow drivers would ever find me captivating enough to divert their attention from the glare of headlights against the road.
The stop was abandoned, save for a box-shaped car that looked like it had traveled from an antiquated time. I walked into another world. Covering the walls were sketches, designs, and words, and from the walls hung permanent markers attached to strings. The only section that was legible was a piece of paper near the entrance, which read, “You came to rest, but your mind is not quiet. Eliminate the bees; share the buzzing.”
I tore a Sharpie off the thread and scribbled the only thing that seemed appropriate: What an incredible thing it is to be alive.
The world is a very dark place, deceptive with its growing chain of lies and corruption and ugly in nature. I believe that most of us have accepted the fact that the world is in constant need of change. Yet from all this desolation, we search for beauty in the small things that shine upon first glance or what we examine, closely and calculatingly, before we really see. We all need to know that in spite of such tragedy and calamity around us, we can find something delicate and dazzling, faint and fascinating. That’s what keeps us going.
