Coming Back from a Different World

I think I’ve been mixing up the reality with imaginary world for a while. On the other hand invisible doesn’t mean surreal – my perception of things and emotions felt very real to me, they are just not the kind to share… Any way coming back from a different world evoked some serious thinking – is there a way to combine two realities: the one that’s in my head and the one perceived not just by me but also by those around me. And I need to find a way otherwise it will haunt me as some unhealthy obsession. At one point I began to fear that I am losing my sanity but labeling anything out of ordinary as crazy is probably not the right solution. Let’s call it being different: some people look at a person from the standard set - name, age, occupation, hobbies, etc… I see way beyond this : I try to grasp the soul – feelings, emotions, fear, pain. I try to see right through the external shell and get to the core of it which I call the truth. It’s not subjective because it’s not thought over, it’s felt on the intuitive level and can hardly be explained.

What scared me the most these days is how seeing through people affected me emotionally, up to the point of shaking and almost suffocating. I wish I had the explanation. You meet someone’s gaze for a split second and begin to shake. You are hit by the power of one’s eyes. Having visions was an even bigger puzzle. Let’s say you keep a normal conversation with a person but on some parallel level the two of you in a tight hug - and you see both realities simultaneously. I am not afraid because the development of things cheers me up in a way, but I can clearly see that it’s hurting me too. I’ve been fighting the gravity that was pulling me with surprising power and the worst (or the best) part was that I didn’t feel like fighting. One more signal and I would probably have dived right in. I don’t know. I am still perplexed. Meeting with enigmatic and powerful people that attract us in a supernatural way is sure a challenge. They pale our reality and arouse something inside that I didn’t know was there. As if I was stripped of all my layers, pretense didn’t even matter anymore because the invisible things got all the power. Being attracted to someone, longing for someone does not always have a logical explanation and just needs to be endured. And I am not sure how I am going to act next time I have a similar experience, but for now I am on a break. Just some vague memories and my dreams as a reminder...

What Truth is True?

A human soul must be the most complicated and complex phenomenon on Earth. Years of mistakes and erroneous decisions may pass before we find ourselves on the right track of finding our true meaning in life. Sometimes we may get a hint and start moving in the right direction, but many times we are not even close so we keep bumping into the walls or give up all together.

But as we try to unravel this most important puzzle of our lives and determine the purpose of our existence, we must support this existence because a body-to-feed is attached to this mysterious soul of ours. So we work hard, then we work harder, then we get dissolved in this whole work-pay-bills-plan-the-future routine. There’s no time to be wasted on philosophy – we talk career opportunities, innovative technologies, endless new gadgets and information overload. We turn into robots. We watch movies and read books that require no thinking, their primitive ideas are spread evenly onto our brains as cream cheese on a stale bagel. These no-brainer movies and shows are produced for our sheer amusement and barely ever contain a single solid idea to contemplate about. And there’s a reason to it: we are too busy with our work and too lazy because of all the new technology.

Sometimes it terrifies me to see how the evolution oversimplifies a human nature. There is so much to us – we are all multi-faceted individuals, so unique, each with their own set of talents and skills. But all the uniqueness gets pushed back because we need to keep up with the ever-accelerating pace of life. I miss the time of great movies and amazing books, when one single phrase would suddenly resonate inside of you, shake your whole world. Now I get frustrated that book after book I attempt to enjoy fail to stir any kind of emotion in me – as if someone has chewed the food before placing it in your mouth and all you have to do now is just swallow it. I miss ideas behind the words, searching some hidden meaning, solving riddles, making discoveries. Each morning when on a train I stare at meaningless faces and try to understand why is it that we should give up on living and start existing; why there’s no fire in the faded eyes…

There’s so much good in me that’s dying to come out yet I feel like an actor without the stage and the audience. This need to find an external expression to my inner world is reflected in the clothes I wear, the words I choose, the blogs I comment on. I don’t want to suppress my personality, I don’t want to escape my delusional world because as made up as it seems, it is still more real than the robotic reality surrounding me.I am filled with a whirlwood of emotions and daring ideas, and who said it's worse than to feel nothing. I want to celebrate every day of a meaningful existence, every shade of emotion, every unrealistic dream and every discovery I make about the complex phenomenon of my own human soul.

Playing With Fire

I had a week of excruciating agonizing physical pain. And even though my body didn’t exhibit much tolerance and gave out a good portion of moaning and groaning, my mind was calm with acceptance. What kept me sane was knowing that any kind of physical pain, no matter how strong and intolerable it seems, eventually comes to an end. And once we heal, our brain will block all the memories of the torturous experience. It’s like recovering after the c-section: I remember it was pretty bad but I don’t really remember the details.

Emotional pain is a different story. You never know when you’ll finally feel relief, you are never sure if you really hit the bottom. How long is it going to last? What can you do at least to ease it, since you know that you can’t make it go away completely? It enslaves you, guides your actions, distracts you from what’s important in your life. Emotional pain is unpredictable and often illogical. Just when you think it’s finally getting better something will trigger the new downfall – back to collecting your pieces… It’s like one step forward, two steps back…

Coming out of it emotionally drained, you promise you will never ever let it come to that again. You will live a quiet turmoil-free life and stay clear of potentially hazardous situations. But life is life – and we inevitably get drawn into a precipice. We long for a taste of a forbidden fruit even being somewhat aware of the consequences. But the attraction becomes too irresistible: you tell yourself – I will just get a tiny bite, and then another one, and one more… Before you know it the addiction is too strong to fight and you are back to the hell where the price for seconds of happiness and pleasure is hours, days, weeks of that agonizing emotional pain you’ve once promised to avoid. So having one foot above the abyss, ask yourself if it isn’t too late to stop…

Time For Happy Thoughts

It’s good to have things happening, to take a break from all the self-analysis and self-digging. I’ve been busy at work, going out with friends, going to the circus with my family on Easter Day, watching lots of good movies, eating delicious food. I managed to free my mind from all the issues and thoughts it’s been trying to process and just live my life. No over thinking – just taking everything in and let things be. And I love it this way, being able to live in the moment without projecting too far into the future or letting the past haunt you.

I am able to see the true brightness of colors, food tastes better to me. And how can I not enjoy life when spring is finally here at its full strength! Last night I opened the window and breathed in the warm breezy spring air filled with the aroma of the blossoming trees. I thought – no matter what happens in your life, spring always comes and fills you with happiness. It’s the time when we are reborn, just like the new leaves start growing on the trees out of nowhere. We shed off the weight of the winter mood, the gloom, the dark thoughts, our sleepiness, - feeling lighter, rejuvenated. We open our toes and our hearts, put on summer clothes and bright smiles, getting some tan and some adventures.

Spring is the time when we long for love but this time I don’t search for it externally. I feel it inside of me, always present, filling me with light and forgiveness. It’s good to know that I can let it shine through, reach random people, and still have plenty left. Because love has no limits and no boundaries, it’s endless and eternal. As long as we don’t push it away from our hearts, it will grow and blossom inside of us, empowering us to live our lives the right way.

It's spring and I am very happy.

Big Day

I have my ups and downs. But today was a big day for me. I got my pay raise. I had a very successful presentation for our biggest client, which I had to put together on a short notice, since they “forgot to notify me of the upcoming meeting”. People walked over to me afterward in order to express their gratitude. That meant a world to me not only as acknowledgment of my professional growth, but also as a reward for fighting big personal battles day after day. I feel down a lot but I try to look and act happy because happiness and love are the ultimate goals in this life. And you don’t stand a chance to be happy if you let your emotional weakness and depression drag you down. I cannot afford to lose respect for myself, my dignity, because then I will never summon the strength to get out of bed each morning. So nervous or not, I get out there and talk. Because I’d rather be defeated than become a coward in my own eyes. Because I am ambitious and stubborn. Because to me lack of progress is regress, staying in one spot is the same as moving backward. Because at the end of the day I know that I was born a fighter.

In The World Of Fantasy

Sometimes I lose touch with the reality. I feel like way too often my imagination lifts me up and carries me to distant non-existent places, showing me things that could only happen in my dreams. But at the same time I believe that imagination is the biggest part of our survival kit: it gives us a temporary escape from reality when we can no longer deal with it. Some bright made-up images keep me awake at night filling me up with aspiration and hope, but that’s another story.

What I find puzzling is how there aren’t always distinct boundaries between the real and imaginary worlds. A couple of things observed in real life find a way to almost instantly tie into a beautiful fairy tale. Life is less dull and monotonous if you fill it with fantasies based on the real things. You may get carried away by the whole process, but when it’s time to come back to earth, you shake all the things you imagined off your mind and go about your daily routine with focus and seriousness that are naturally expected of you. And then to your biggest surprise you discover that some things you attributed to your imagination are actually very real. This makes you question other of your numerous fantasies and anecdotic conclusions: what if there’s some truth in them as well? This will overwhelm you to the extent that you will want to stop this confusing process of day-dreaming. You try to stay real, take people for what they are, interpret events solely based on the facts. You are too afraid to miss the realness of your life just because at some point you decided that staying in the imaginary world is more fun.

But a dreamy mind can only stay sober that long. And yet again based on just a few signs I made such a lovely story of which I am the main character. Every morning I tell myself it’s not real, but every night I wake up to relive the details of my fable. If only I knew if I want to ever know the truth or not-knowing makes me safe and reasonably happy, because I can always adjust the story line in my mind just to my liking. I think between the real and the imaginary, the truth has to be somewhere in the middle. Not everything that we see is what it really is, and not everything that we dream of is fake.

One Simple Discovery

Last night I was reading to my son his favorite encyclopedia about planets. When we came across the explanation of “shooting stars”, I decided to expand on the topic and told him about the make-a-wish belief. I said that unfortunately it happens so quickly, there’s barely enough time to think of a wish, so you’d better have it ready. I was about to turn the page, when my son told me that his wish would be that his favorite classmate lived close to us and they could play on the weekends together. I smiled at the innocence of the wish and how quickly he came up with it, but then…

Then I had this moment… I thought – at least he has a wish, what would mine be? And I clearly knew the answer right that second: I don’t have one. It’s not that I have absolutely no dreams, or desires. There isn’t a wish that I’d want to waste a shooting star for. I already have all the things I ever wished for. Big things. Important things. Things that make me happy. Any other good things that will happen to me in this life will be a lovely addition to the already present happiness. Because if I cannot admit that I am happy with everything that I have, then no things in the world can ever make me happy.

Next time I see a shooting star, I will only smile and let someone else “use” its wish-granting power. I am all set. Is there a more simple definition of happiness?