|
|
as usual, i have to be doing somehing else during lecture in order to be able to focus on what i'm listening to. this is getting ridiculous, like some weird oxymoron. i have to be doing something else in order to focus on the lecture. great. no wonder the past week has been a bur of confusion. i really should try to get rid of this bad habbit of mine. but you know what they say. old habits die hard.
to some extent, i guess i have gained enlightenment yesterday? well, if not enlightenment, then at least i have things sorted out more than i have tried to for the course of this ambiguous four years. i suppose this is why what doctor roy said appeals to me so much. when we forget and deny something wilfully, we are doing a sort of violence to ourselves. because in order to deliberately forget, you have to give up a part of you, and in doing so, you are doing violence to yourself. i've tried so many times to forget so many things and people, all because i was afraid of getting hurt when i think about these things, afraid of finding out for sure that many things in life is just a great illusion, a big lie, and that things are never what they seem to be. sounds like a depressing and pessimistic view, doesnt it? but the point is that behind this pessimism, there is some kind of a cold, grim, hard truth to it. in trying so hard not to remember, i did exactly the thing to myself that i wanted to avoid - i hurt myself. i wrapped myself so tightly in the cocoon of safety that the coccoon bit into me, cut off my circulation and blinded me to my very own bleeding emotions. i read my bitterness and hate as ignorance, my sorrow as incidental, and my fear as uncalled for paranoia. its reassuring to think this way, because you wont feel any of the extreme ends of happiness or sadness that tear you apart sometimes. in the process, i was desensitised, numbed to everything around me, i couldnt love because i was afraid of falling prey to my own turmoil, and i hated because i was terrified of seeing clearly for myself all my inadequacies. how then, can i get the peace i want so much, the quietness that i know will give me strength to carry on no matter what?
to forget, you have to remember, and to remember, you have to forget. you will only know you have forgotten when you sit on the couch after a nice long shower years down the road, and that someone's face flashes in your mind when you hear the sweet strains of your childhood playing on your stereo. and to have suddenly remembered this face like this, you would have had to forget the face, forget your childhood in the first place. its a contradiction that will go on, that is ceaseless. i know i will never really forget, yet i will never really remember either. and the fog of a memory that's left - is it real? did it really happen? nobody really knows, not even me. are the emotions i remember now really those i felt then? did things really happen the way that i remember them? there are uncertainties riddled everywhere in this. there's no way to justify, no means to test the truth. i used to loathe this uncertainty. i hated that i couldnt remember the details, i hated that i couldnt be sure that my account of the things that had happened were the most accurate. i wanted black and white, clean and precise lines drawn that would never waver. i refused to acknowledge the grey, and i couldnt deal with it either. but as you grow older, you also grow resigned (no, i DO NOT believe we wise up when we grow older) to the workings of life. reject uncertainty and it will still haunt you anyway. so just live with it, and hope to get used to it. to move on with life, we have to forget. but totally forgetting is impossible. does that mean that moving on is impossible? maybe, maybe not. after, i gained redemption from the darkness just not too long ago. maybe there is some optimism out there in the world. the problem is, is there enough out there such that i get a share too?
i have taken for granted the stability of a stable friendship, and i realise now that the confusion i felt earlier was because i was afraid of losing this stability, this feeling of being loved and cared for, being pampered. after all, our paths are diverging like never before. who knows what will happen next? who knows when this friendship will fade? again, i want certainty. and i know i will not get it. the only thing i will get is that i have a place in the heart that is important to me. and no matter what the progress of time will do to my place, i will have left a mark, which will never clearly show, nor fully be erased.
here's to love. and family. and friends.
and to enlightenment.
posted by sarangaia || 7:18 PM Sunday, October 28, 2007
|
