Here I am, it’s been almost three months since my last post. Not that anyone besides myself reads this, but guilt has prompted me to once again harass the unsuspecting web surfer with my musings.
Sometimes life just feels like we’re drifting along. Not toward or away from anything, just caught in a sort of limbo between our past and our future. This inertia is comforting at first- no rush, no worries, no pressing urge to be somewhere; but this artificial contentment is deceiving in that it’s like a black hole that sucks you in, and won’t let you go. What starts out feeling like a short span of relaxation and recharging soon becomes a lifestyle, and when you’re alone, that lifestyle is depressing and bleak.
Sometimes this limbo isn’t our fault. Sometimes we have the future all ready and set to go, but through no fault of our own, we are unable to move forward. That is when things start to get sticky. That is when the real danger for insanity moves in.
Imagine being in an empty room, you’re not cold, thirsty or hungry; just… separate. Now imagine in the wall of that room a pane of glass through which you see your future playing out. There’s no escape, no way out of the room and into the future you want so badly you can almost touch it. And you have no control over if or when you will be released from that room. A higher power holds the key to the only exit that leads to that vision of happiness you can see through the glass. Depressing, yes?
So, how do you keep from going crazy? How do you keep from beating your head against the glass until there’s a hole in your skull big enough for your brains to leak out? Hope. It’s the one and only life preserver in this particular sea of misery. One of my favorite lines in one of my favorite movies is:
“Hope guides me…” (A Knight’s Tale; Letter to Jocelyn from William)
How true. Whether we’re in the box, or outside the box looking in, hope is the only thing that sustains us. Hope that our dreams can and will come true, hope that the future we’ve planned won’t be snatched from us in an instant, hope that tomorrow or the next day, or the day after that, will bring the things we have so longed for; or hope that the happiness we’ve found lasts just a little bit longer.
Hope allows us to drift along on that sea of inertia, to stand idly watching through the glass, for one more day. One more hour. One more moment.
Nicely expressed – I could feel the room. For me, hope has all come down to one thing: surrender. I look at my being as having three parts that wrestle for control: Mind – Ego – Soul
Mind and Ego have primarily won the battle through the years, and their counsel is self-serving, limiting, and ultimately a dead-end. They drive the bus in circles. Surrender – real surrender – to the third part became the only thing that made any sense, the only way through that window… and no one said it would be easy. :) I’m very curious how you see your being and “who” is in control of you? Do you see the Mind-Ego-Soul with yourself, or something else? -Cheers, Deets
P.S. You’re not the only one that reads your posts.