You know that feeling you get just before falling asleep? Where your mind tells you that you are falling, falling into a hole, or falling down a cliff? When you know that you are not really falling, you are in this beautiful and scary state between consciousness and unconsciousness and in a few seconds, you will be asleep but surprisingly, you are still afraid of falling into that hole, your body still jerks ever so often.
Sometimes, life feels like that, life feels like this state between knowing absolutely everything and absolutely nothing all at once.
Act 1- CHAOS AND CONTROL
You realise that you live in a world so filled with chaos that the only way you can feel alive and present is by focusing on the things you can control. But you see, that urge to control everything means always trying to be one step ahead, trying to be on the right side of situations, trying to take all the power you can get in every circumstance and it is only later you realise that you are slowly forgetting to let go, to take off that armour sometimes and truly feel. You are no longer really alive and present.
Can you truly be present in a world that is so chaotic?
Act 2- TRUTHS
The universe does not operate on formulas and rules. There is no user manual for the game called life. It sounds so obvious but some situations in life hit you with the truth and that’s when you realise that knowing something as a result of people telling you about it, versus knowing something as a result of you experiencing it are two very different things. That is why it is so important to let yourself experience everything. To let life hit you with truths that seem so obvious sometimes.
Act 3- DISCOMFORT
You let yourself experience everything, you listen to people’s stories, their dreams and pains.
There is comfort in knowing that so many people have gone through the same things and so many people will go through the same things you are going through. But you don’t know how to deal with the discomfort that comes from knowing that maybe everything that seems so new and unique to you is not really special, that millions have already had the same problems you have and they are still trying to solve them or, are solving other problems that you will have sometime later in your life.
Act 4- HAPPINESS AND PAIN
A life filled with depth is a life where you choose to watch the sunset a little longer, where you choose to wander deeper into a jungle just to see the stars a bit more clearly, where you choose to talk and think about things like time machines and the future for hours, or observe how two colours just complement so well with each other or smile at random strangers you meet. But you see, accepting that life means that you are also opening yourself to the thorns that come from walking deeper into that jungle, to the realisation that maybe you do not really ever want to know the future, that explaining why two things go well together just ruins the magic between them, to days when strangers look at you as if you are the reason why their life is in ruins.
Happiness and pain will always coexist.
Life is a continuous cycle of learning and unlearning. You never really do move past a phase, rather phases come, go and come again continuously in different forms. We just get better at holding everything and nothing with each phase that comes by.
I think there is comfort in that, there is comfort in knowing that you can be at the end of your life and know so much about it and still know nothing at all.
