An ordinary eye cast upon this country’s common people yields a conclusion that we are all unconsciously tired. We may even be depressed at the conscious thought of being tired. These are our storylines: ignorance to wisdom, sadness to happiness, emptiness to meaning, and the most popular of them all: rags to riches. We desire these positive ends ala soap opera modeled from the collective belief about the ideal progression of life. Since the attainment of these ends adhere to the demanding measure of satisfaction, we are hardly ever there. Just as when we think we are, an unknown force pushes us to go further. What now?
Stargazing embodies the subliminal hope of having something better out there. Often disguised as wonder, we weave dreams and are drawn towards it. Remember play pretends? That was when this progressive panic attack started. Our childhood was characterized by excessive leisure devoid of fear and by innocence but it shaped it our history anyway.
The only way to the other side of the dream is through it. Those projective visions we have seen of ourselves are structured through syntax and eloquent writing: What is My Goal in Life? Our academic formation serves as the strongest foundation of what will become as our struggle to succeed. For fourteen to twenty years, we were constantly reminded that education is the greatest prize for the mind and the most valuable asset that fails the foolishness of liquidation. We did not even know it will serve a great purpose yet. We just felt that it was the right thing to do as expected because everybody is doing it. Earning that diploma told you it was impeccably so.
Consider yourself blessed now if you have a job. We undergo the process of living apart and on our own with the expectancy of paying everything forward. Most young people of my generation fail this. The distraction of an active life and being able to produce the numbers appease our wants and defeats investing for the future. When you yearn for someone to blame, you deflect from yourself and ask who invented money anyway? Why did it become a greedy necessity? Since it has become a driver to weld scattered wishes, it dawns on us that our ability to make it so is the real cause of our early frustration. You now know that the initial struggle you have gone through and will yet go through is a part of a collective conspiracy about a life lived with direction. You have to be at least somewhere to be someone.
At the middle part of your life, you will begin to internalize that regret is wasteful. Previous decisions made you who you are now and those were based on the circumstances o f that time. They could be wrong but you were still around to pounce on a second chance to mend bridges and rekindle an old passion. Some people did this: joined a feminist movement, came out of the closet, completed their graduate studies, got married, and became parents.
Consider yourself exceptional when you reach 60. You retire and acknowledge that this is the start of the recollection of youth. This recollection may explain why you are a bitter old man while your best friend is a cool granny. You may realize that you are prone to enjoy life’s remainder and that you were made to believe that you entitlement to spontaneous happiness is awarded when you are past your prime. What is that for?
At the interval of our lives, we welcomed fate as they key to be suddenly lifted up from our misery in a snap of time. We relied on fate and this is what happened: we remained the same – sedentary creatures living a sedentary life, blaming the system, other people, the weather and even our own face. If you are thinking of giving away what you have started, doing it over again will surely cause you tiredness and helplessness. This is not acceptable because life will only pass you by and it will not dare look back. We cannot be born and die as the same person. The great discrepancy of what is and what ought to be may be closed by a creed if only to give meaning to our struggles:
Uplift thyself.
Thank you to Heri Santoso for the featured image.