Monday, September 19, 2011

This Can't Be Life

I’m quite certain we’ve all had that moment in the bathroom, while we’re filling the sink with water to wash our face, and we look at our reflection in the mirror. We notice the unsightly zit that’s forming above our left eye brow and give it a squeeze. We stare at ourselves. We slowly turn our heads left then right, scrutinising the flaws we see in ourselves. We pose. We pout. We smile. We may ruffle our hair, just to make ourselves look more, I don’t know, attractive. We squeeze some face-wash, or whatever product you use, into your palm, rub your hands together and start lathering our faces with product.
While going through the motions, ensuring that our entire visage is covered, splashing the water we had run for ourselves to cleanse the soap, our minds wander. We think about our relationships with friends and family. We think about who we haven’t called in ages. We think about how this person pissed us off today. We think about how old we’re getting, and start going down the mental checklist of what we wanted to have accomplished by now. We think about the things we wish were different about our existence. We look at the hand that fate has dealt to us and come to the same conclusion: this can’t be life.
What’s most amazing about this natural process is that it’s universal, no matter how awesome life may be. One can have absolutely everything going for him, but will have that ‘stop the world, I wanna get off’ moment. When you fall into a routine, your mind plays crazy tricks on you. It’s like suddenly you’ve become a philosopher and you question everything. You stare intensely at something, and try to anchor yourself with reality. Am I dreaming? Is this a dream? Am I a part of The Matrix? I, of course, am no exception to the rule, and I find myself having these moments more often than I’d like. What it proves is that, no matter how prepared you may think you are at tackling the journey called life, you will never, ever know what to expect.
I don’t really know what I’m trying to get at with this post. I guess I’m just voicing my thoughts. I, like many others out there, am questioning everything about myself, and finding myself humming the melody to Stacie Orrico’s ‘More To Life’, wondering just that. This can’t be it. There’s got to be more to life than just THIS.
Am I going crazy? Can someone answer that for me? Or am I one of 7-billion others with the same embedded query sitting in the cellar of my mind? I have aspirations, much like everyone else, and I have a time line and trajectory I’d more or less try to stick to. Sometimes I feel like I’m WAY off the mark, and that I should re-strategize. It’s painful to see your life take a direction that wasn’t intended, even if that direction isn’t necessarily a bad one. I’m right there in my life.
With all that being said, I would like to thank the Higher Power for the friends I have, who routinely slap me through the face, proverbially speaking, and tell me to calm down. I have this tendency to forget that I am but nineteen. I do, in reality, have an entire life ahead of me, as well as enough time to accomplish the things I’d like to accomplish. It’s such a bad habit for me, and everyone else on this green and blue planet, to compare my life with someone else’s and see things in that life that I would like in mine. Nobody’s life is sublime, and we should not live in the shadow of someone else.
I’d like to end saying that as hard as it may be to do this, it is imperative to appreciate and respect the seemingly measly life you live. After all, you are only given one of those.
Best
Andrei Damane

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