angelwithabullet

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Tuesday, 7 July 2009 at 13:13

I’m living in a dead place. It’s full of doom and gloom, sadness, frustration and irritation with the way things are. Yet there is something alive about it. Something not quite at its end.

Here, I have no television, and for that I am relieved of the normal distractions that everyone else suffers. Suffers? Well yes. World events that hit the headlines always makes for sad and bad news. The good thing is I’m not enticed into the world of buy, buy, buy. My eyes are not hypnotised by materialism, my brain is not led to believe speedy-paced commercial gain will get me to places I’ve only ever dreamed possible. I think I'm one of the few people on the planet that hasn't watched Wacko Jacko's box being placed beneath the earth.

My head seems altogether clearer here. Even though my body is restricted by the obligations of duty that are placed upon it, my thoughts are free. I will admit, though, it has taken me a while to understand why this is so.

I believe most of my life has been endured. Though I’ve always strived for the optimistic approach, it bugs me that everything I have ever faced has been represented as a challenge. I’ve looked for the free space of peace, but have not found it. It has eluded me.

But here, in my mind, I am free. Inside me, I feel at peace. I’m soulful, if you know what that means. I think it’s because I’m getting older, and hopefully wiser. The time I have allows me to stop and think, to look at life from outside of me. It allows me to appreciate life for what it really is for others, and for me and I like the ‘me’ I am becoming.

Everyone I know pictures and plans their futures with a backward glance to their guilty, regretful past. Yet, the present in their eyes, escapes them. It’s as though now doesn’t matter. Now doesn’t count. Now isn’t really real. There’s always this ‘hope’ for what is to come and no recognition for what is being given in the present.

I like real people. The people who work to make ends meet. The people who know who they are and what their life consists of. I like people who smile at small things that they can accomplish, even if that just means opening their eyes and slipping their legs out from beneath the duvet onto the carpet each morning. Moving from their bed, through their home, through another day of work.

That’s an achievement to me. In that, there is creation. In that, there is change. And change is life. Like particles of dust floating in the air, highlighted by the sunshine behind. Like water sparkling along a flowing brook in a woodland glen. Like flames crackling warmth in a fireside grate. Like soft earth sinking beneath bare feet.

I know our brains have to be dissatisfied with the way things are. And our hormones keep us growing, keep us inventing and creating. They both work together so we can learn new skills to satisfy new desires for bigger and better ‘things’ to improve upon the life we have.

But, if we didn’t ever have that urge to create, would really be unhappy? It's true that no one ever said life was easy. We are all aware that life can be very hard at times. So why do we call this suffering? And why do we think, if we don’t suffer the bad, then we don’t deserve the good?

There are many religions and faiths of some kind or another all over this planet we all inhabit. But I don’t want to follow any one of them. I am lucky to live in a society that has been allowed to be free to explore. I’m able to be a part of any life I wish. I don’t have to detach myself from it. I can immerse myself in it or release myself from it. No one is to blame, or to thank, for the choices I make, but me.

Nothing you have said to another should be so painful a memory that you have to live with the guilt for the rest of your days on earth. Everything that passes through our individual lives, is a valuable and wonderful lesson.

I look at people’s lives and I see the small happenings. The way someone blinks or winks or stinks. The way they move their shoulders, their ankles, or the way they smile or cry. They are all beautiful. They glow in their own light. They sparkled and dazzle.

When I was younger I thought there was going to be only a few people that I would make a connection with. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised that’s so wrong. There are so many people in this little life of mine, that I’ve lost count with the amount of souls who have affected my life’s decisions. And I often get to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t met them. Would things have been so very different?

I like exploring people. I like watching them. I like listening to them. My friends and family and even those I don’t know. Those who like me and those who don’t like me. Each connection I make has its own special adventure to take me on. Each person that crosses my path has within them, their own perfect qualities. Some may say it’s idealistic of me, but I know in my heart that everyone wants to be seen as a good person. They may not be a good person, but even those, the bad ones, hunger for someone to love them for who they are.

Why is that I wonder? Why do people hunger for someone or something that they don’t have in their lives? Is that the reason that people try to find each other again after many years of parting? Nobody will ever be everything to one person. If I had stayed with one person for all of my adult life, I would not have gotten to experience all the experiences I’ve experienced. I would not have been able to know love the way I do.

I know a great many people who are disillusioned by relationships. They think the passion should live on forever. They don’t see the deepness in a calmer state of loving. The way society is at present seems all so fucked up. Because women want independence, so they’ve been encouraged to ‘be the boss’ – but men need to feel essential, admired and know that they can provide. But they don’t anymore. Women feel they have to get a man to prove they don’t need a man. But what women really want is to be appreciated for who they are, not what they could become. Men don’t know how to tell them that.

I’ve had a few relationships where men have not been there for me (philandering). Not provided for me (tight). Not protected me (abandonment). They cared for me in their own way, but not the way that I wanted to be cared for. And I couldn’t tell them how I wanted to be cared for, because I didn’t know how I wanted to be cared for. Each relationship reached it’s own inevitable conclusion: in the end.

As a result, I should be the kind of person who can’t relate to love. But I’m not. All the men I meet now are married. Or too young. I could begin to ask: Is love for me? Why was I missed of the kissing list? Every single one of my exes are married – to another woman. At first I was filled with rage, then sorrow, then regret, then a ‘so what?’ attitude. Why didn’t they ask me? There was nothing wrong with me. I was heartbroken. Each time I found out they had hooked up with a leggy blonde years younger than myself.

I know that no man willingly leaves his children. I know that many men will suffer having no joy in their life to be with them.

That’s honour.

That’s loyalty.

That’s commitment.

That’s true suffering.

Suffering in the face of living someone else’s idea of how people are supposed to live.

Tell me if you think I’m wrong.

So, knowing all of this, you would think I would take the route a pessimist would, or that I wouldn’t make any kind of effort anymore because of the sorrow and pain I've experienced in life. But you’d be thinking wrong.

Instead of dying, I know I’m still alive inside. I've always looked at life in the eye and have never shirked away from the duty of living. There’s passion in action. And I’m ever hopeful of being able to take part in whatever comes my way. Some people say I am naïve to be so optimistic. But I’d rather be optimistic and have the sensations of happiness within me than the doom and gloom that I see others perish with in their own thoughts and belief systems that lead them to disillusionment and hate. I believe and have faith in the knowledge that no decision made should be regretted. No one should ever be judged because of what someone else has said or what you have thought about them before you have had the chance to get to know them.

This moment, to me is the life we are to lead so we are to live.

This is all we have. Every moment of every day, is a gift.

Live it.

I intend to.

kaye x