When I was in seventh grade I was one of the happiest, most enthusiastic, perkiest people I knew. I had almost everything I wanted, and I had an unshakable faith that the rest would all be taken care of. I wasn’t afraid to "dream big" and was sure that a perfect, happy future was looming somewhere beyond the horizon, and I could go in no other direction than towards the rising sun.
When life got a little grimmer the next year, I started to see the darker side of things. I would scold myself for allowing myself to be so naive and alienated from reality. I tried to shut out my inner dreamer, which so often had become associated with stupidity and superficiality. I would cringe at the thought of my former, smiling idiot self who was happy, I then thought, only because she had alienated herself to the bitter truths of life.
It’s ironic then, that three years later I find myself idolizing her. I have since realized that my great, inner happiness was not necessarily caused by self deception, but by my solid belief in all the exciting possibilities the present and future held. My “romantic readiness” so to speak. I now wish that the current me could be so willing to put all her hopes and aspirations into a complexly fabricated daydream, without trying to downplay these mental excursions as stupid and impossible fantasies to be seen in the mind’s eye, but never believed. I wish I could still believe, so wholly, in a happy future that was just around the corner. To smell the sense of possibility in every hot summer day and humid summer night, and just be really excited about the promises of my life, instead of being stuck in the dullness of one lifeless moment after another.
It’s very easy to lose your inner dreamer, and at first I reveled in my new wizened and skeptical self. It was like a misery-laced party for one- spending time moping, glaring, and bitter, believing only in a profound loss of all hope. But the truth is, the more you try to believe something, the more it becomes true. And eventually, at least with something like that, it gets old. The quest I face now is possibly far more challenging- trying to get my inner dreamer back, not only for the sake of my sanity, but for the great source of creative energy that comes with her. Is it a coincidence that around the time I started scolding my dreaming, creative part, I stopped playing dress up games and doodling pictures with all sorts of fantastic stories attached to them? I recently realized that we spend our entire lives trying to re learn what we learned in kindergarten- but I never realized to what degree I was correct.
And I know I’m not alone. It’s a quest as old as time. In genesis, Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, realized they were vulnerable fools, and were forever expelled from paradise. Now, I am mimicking the same quest as the rest of their offspring: the search to my own mental state of Eden. I know it’s impossible to once again enjoy a perfectly conscious free bliss, (unless maybe I try drugs) but I also know that having seen the darker side of things, I might just find even truer happiness. I will not have just been born and raised in the garden, but I will have had the joy of knowing I worked to get there. And I can get there-I just need to believe it exists.
It is that outlook that allows me to accept the negative influences in my life, (after all, I often later thank them for what they have taught me) but I can’t let them live my life for me, or force me into a self-imposed prison of skepticism and lack of faith. I don’t need to force myself to be entirely content with the reality I have, i just need to appreciate it more. And , most importantly, for the things I don’t have I need to give myself full license to really believe in the possibilities of my existence, and all the great tings my future can hold if I let it. I need re-learn how to lose myself just enough in a dream to remember how good life can-and someday will- be. And after all, reality is only the way you choose to interpret it, and keeping a foot hold in reality is like anchoring a ship in water- sure, the general area stays the same, and that’s important, but the exact location is ever shifting with the tides. You’ll never know where it was, and you’ll never know where it will end up.
So Here Goes...
I beleive in the orgastic future which is not receeding, but approaching with my
every step.
and I beleive I can Go.
This entry is dedicated to Eliza, who never fails to astound me with her unlimited supply of joy and creativity.
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