06 July 2011

On Loneliness and Defying the Fall


My best friend once told me that the reason why sometimes we'd rather be lonely than happy is because we don't really know what it's like to be truly happy. But don't we? Or is it only because we're always expecting that there's something more than there is? Maybe there was a million shot at happiness, but we just never had the guts to take a hold of it. Why can't we just call things as we see them? The irony is we know what will make us happy, yet we never pursue. And in the end we blame the heavens for our forsaken fate.

What are we so afraid of?

I may be a lot of things, but brave is not one of them. I think. I am a thinker before I am a doer. I plan. I plan everything, and I really don't like it when something goes out of that plan.

In a world where we are taught to be thinkers, to be at all times wise, why is it that nobody is happy? No wonder people have been described too many a times in books and in movies as mere souls roaming around without a destination. And I guess it's safe to say that we can all empathize. As The Beatles sang "All the lonely people, where do they all come from?"

I can't help but think, (Ah, the thinker) that maybe the reason why we're all just a bunch of frustrated souls is because all our lives, society has only been leading us there. Pushing us, blindfolded, without a warning towards this abyss.

From what I see it, education has taught us nothing but to be thinkers. Hence we spend all our lives planning, dreaming and worrying, that at some point it just consumes too much of you that you cannot see anything else anymore. What they never taught us in school was how to be free. To live in the moment. Catch the raindrops with your face, sing loudly out of tune, to jump. To never be afraid of the fall. To risk. To make the mistake. We are all so afraid of mistakes. Well yeah, we don't like a lot of things--rejections, criticism, confrontations, etcetera. But tell me, if we don't commit the mistake, how would we know better than to not make that mistake, if we never made that mistake in the first place?

A breather: Look at me blaming it all to society once again. I am such a phony. If Holden Caulfield could read this I would definitely be one of those sonuvabitches who disgust him so. But then again, I'm sure Mr. Antolini would lecture: (if it's any consolation to the confused soul who's currently reading this whom I've surely depressed) you are not going through this alone. Every other person in this world feels exactly the same way.

This unending battle going on inside every human probably is a lost cause, but doesn't mean we can't try, does it? And maybe one day if we try hard enough, we can shift the flow of the universe and then maybe we'll be happy. Maybe one day no one will ever feel alone. Maybe someone will be there holding your hand because you took the jump. Or they did.

Who ever said that falling is terrible that everyone is so afraid of it? The Weepies puts wings on their bright red boots. Chagall lets his lovers float. Even Buzz Lightyear and Woody "falls with style". Maybe there is something we can do.

Falling with style. Maybe we should try that. And then falling wouldn't have to be so bad, and we won't have to be so afraid to jump anymore. So jump.

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