Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Peripeteia

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends that lasted way into the early hours - way past my usual bedtime anyway.

This is one of my friends who fall into that special category wherein you can not talk/communicate for a lengthy period of time and yet when you do connect, there are no hangups - no recriminations about why didn't you stay in touch, I won't talk to you if you don't, etc. - and it's as if that long period of radio silence had never existed.

Coming after my last post, it seems sort of like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Having no one, being nobody vs. having these kind of friends who know that there is absolutely no chance of being taken for granted, either way of the relationship. But strangely, it's all the same. 

One topic we went over was the corroded mental states we both were experiencing; both similarly disparaged and yet both on two different sides of a coin. One, the state of perpetual loneliness and the aching void that remains yet unfulfilled despite the growing residual feeling of yearning. The other, the agonies of being in a relationship that seems to be fracturing with a multitude of deeply felt problems.  And somehow in the meeting of minds we realized the commonality that there is never a meadow of permanent happiness (chorus: the grass is greener...). 

Happiness is so fleeting. And it is thus because we have made it so. Fleeting indicates the passage of time. And in this day and age everything is so temporally dependent. Time is money etc., etc. But what if we had the ability to live forever? We wouldn't have this embedded calendar of time ticking away, of the grains of sand depleting, of racing to accomplish x number of things by x units of time. Perhaps we would have no need for happiness; contentment would be king. (Or queen, if you prefer.)

If I lived forever, I would know that I had a tomorrow. I would have a tomorrow to wait for if today it could not happen. I could wait for love forever, because there would be no ending in loneliness. And I would have no end of patience. And patience is that which we all need a whole whopping load of.

I can feel my heartbeat slow down, my very breaths calm at the very thought of taking things slowly, at the idea of a forever forever. And yet, why can't I apply the ideal to our specimen of mortality?

Why am I building up these walls of bricks made of instances of time, effectively barricading myself into a cube of claustrophobia? Why am I resenting everything around me with my own conceived and self-constructed perceptions? I don't know. It is like shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. And blaming everything else that brought me to that moment; without realizing maybe there is something I can be doing differently.  

Again, I don't know. But I've promised myself to put my energies into something productive, and not let them fester and become infected. Maybe if I think hard enough I will discover the way to foreverhood.