Is it possible to change? In an everyday sense, of course it is. We routinely make choices that change the future and revise our views of the past. For example, like Joel Barish in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I could decide not to go to work this morning and instead take a train in the opposite direction. More to the point, what can I do to change myself, given that my own limitations are what I want to overcome? I seem to be caught in a paradox. Whatever I do will simply be more of the kind of thing I do. However I exercise my freedom I am only rattling my chains.
Maybe you have the one thought that will change everything for me. The one thing I haven?t considered in my relentless, obsessive, circular thought process. Is there that one thing? Is it possible for one person to impart any transformative notion to another person??1 First, there is the trap, the sense of being imprisoned in your own form of life or habits of mind. Then there is the desire to change, the hope that something could come into your life and make the world new. But then there is the doubt?is there such a key? Given your own profound cluelessness, would you even be able to recognize it if it were offered?
Life, it seems, is too entangled and interrelated for our choices to make much difference. The harder we press toward the object of desire, the more we drag along the thing we are trying to escape. Nature is always shadowed by culture; the self I want is shadowed by the self I am, the self that does the wanting. The more things change?. You look at a baby and it?s so fresh, so clean, so free. Adults?they?re like this mess of anger and phobias and sadness?hopelessness.
There are parts of life that are painful, that is, and parts that we love, but to want one part to the exclusion of the rest is to want something that is not life.
s I lay in bed awake, sometimes my heart begins to race, and I can’t get a deep breath, and I feel way too much. And wonder. And yearn. And long for something that remains beyond my now twenty-five year old understanding.
I lay awake for hours most nights, tossing and turning, wondering about my life. Have I made the right choices so far? What will the rest of my life be like? Is this it; is this really being an adult? How can I make just a little more money? What’s going to happen next? Am I really happy now, or will the future put this happiness to shame? Or, will future misery make this happiness seem even better in retrospect?
I also feel like there is something just below the surface of myself that remains untapped. The same potential that has plagued me all of my life is still swirling around, still waiting to be found. I know I can make a difference, a contribution, do something great, but I cannot figure out what it is or how to do it. I’ve been patient and dedicated, but still it eludes me. And in that regard, I feel unfulfilled.
No comments:
Post a Comment