Thursday, July 31, 2008

Aimless Wandering of Thoughts

Life can sometimes be like a myope walking around without his/her glasses. The myope can see that in the far side of the road, there are obstacles or people who might be able to provide help, but since he/she is a myope, the views of the far end of the road are just a blur, and all that the myope can see are things that are much closer.

Sometimes, some people can see far very clearly, but can't see clearly things that are close to them. They have lofty aims, and often make it really big professionally due to their foresight, yet when it comes to living in the current time, they seem to be unable to meet the mark.

Yet there are others who cannot see either far or near clearly—they end up banging into a lot of painful obstacles until they learn how to see things using more than just their eyes.

And there are the lucky ones who have near-perfect vision, and can see both near and far well. Some of them become very strong leaders to guide those who can't see near, others as leaders for those who can't see far. Yet there are a few who will just silently walk on the road, knowing full well that their near perfect vision grants them a preternatural ability to avoid all obstacles near and far, and not evangelise to other folks whom they think are not worth the time and effort that they have been using.

But for all those who are not blessed with a pair of perfect eyes, they can rely on their eye glasses to help them see better. In life, these glasses are the opportunities that arise to widen one's reflective equilibrium, the education that we receive, and the experience that we gain whenever we hit an obstacle and fall. We almost never walk the road alone; there are others who share part of the journey with us. Sharing our visions with others, we can learn more about the world, and with the people that walk with us, we can have an almost perfect vision together.

Life is not about walking the road alone. There're always companions to be found along the way. The only thing that makes life difficult sometimes, is that one's companions are not always going to be around forever. The loss of a companion, no matter temporary or permanent, is often a reason why some people just sit down on the road and cry for a bit, unable to proceed. With our companions on the road, we have an intertwined destiny of sorts, and their loss can cause a gaping hole in one's collective consciousness.

——

I never truly liked goodbyes. Goodbyes are one of those moments where the sense of loss can simply overwhelm my rather delicate emotional states. Despite the fact that I know that partings are as much as a part of life as are joinings, I can never seem to reconcile with that fact in my heart of hearts. My biggest discomforts in life are largely stemmed from goodbyes from various people, many of them who are friends at some time or another. To say that I'm just an emotionless logic machine, would be a vast underestimation of my humanity.

I broke down before. It is something that I don't really like to bring up, but there're no secrets, really. The break down was not wholly unexpected, given the circumstances in which it occurred. Don't get me wrong, life is beautiful and all, but life can also be a bitch at times. And it is at those times where if one does not have enough support, one breaks down. As I steadily increase in age, it seems that I am slowly regaining what was my lost humanity. And it shows in the most unlikely of places.

As a musician, I was only a technical player, being able to play the notes as they were annotated on the music score, following with mechanical precision the timing and dynamics. I was not a bad player, but all who were more experienced than me told me that my music was lacking in emotional content; all they heard were just unconnected tones, and not the music that was within. But as I slowly egressed from my self-made shell of isolation, I began to understand what was it they meant when they said that my music was lacking in emotional content. I started to listen to Teresa Teng's music, and from there I slowly learnt how to bring out the emotion that was within the music.

I used to play with only my fingers, now I play with my heart. Any wind instrument that I pick up, as long as I knew how to play notes on it, I could play music now. Emotions... something that I once thought that I would never need, have become something that I am slowly learning to accept as being a part of me.

It is the repressed emotions of many years that caused my break down. It was not a pretty sight, from any perspective. Life was literally being turned upside down through the destructive thoughts of the break down. I couldn't help it then—my rational mind was screaming at me to stop the idiocy that I was displaying, but I couldn't reign in the uncontrollable outburst of emotions. I broke down so hard and so bad, that people got worried, people who truly cared, and people who didn't really care all too much. That night when it happened, it was a dark night indeed.

Today, right here, right now, as I am saying all these, I cannot tell if I've truly gotten over that break down that I had. I think that I am fine, and no one seems to notice anything truly different about me, but this is one of those things where it is really hard to tell. Sometimes I sit alone in the dark and look out the window, like the many nights I had before the break down, thinking about things in the past, present and future, wondering about the things that I could have done, and the things that I have done, and the things that I need to have done. Each time I sit in silent solitude in the dark contemplating, I always wondered what I would have become had I chosen a different path in life.

——

The moon. She lured me, enticed me, then mocked me and spurned me. Now she sits up there in the pretty sky serene and quiet, her rays of light bathing me in a strange silent glow. I used to love the moon, then I hated it; now I just feel sorry for it. For in all the actions of mankind, good or bad, at least we are together as one. The moon just sits there, alone in her heavenly throne, and can only sigh at whatever happens beneath her feet, as her eternal glances upon earth, go on into infinity.

I looked upon the moon's face, and thought, goodbye world.

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