Infinity

My problem is not that I have the wrong things but that I want the wrong things. I hold onto the wrong ideas. I chase a permanent and lasting happiness, and so I am always sad. I long for love, and so I am lonely. I hold the idea of forever, and so I am always betrayed.

The truth is, actual happiness is something you come by maybe a couple of times a year. And day-to-day, you can find frequent appreciation of life and the miracle of the human conscious, but to expect to live in some continual cloud of bliss is a sadly unrealistic thought. As for the ideas of love and forever, they are worst when held together. If there is such thing as genuine, romantic love, as I suspect there may be, I have no delusions about its length. Few things are eternal, and human relationships are not among them. But if you are lucky enough to receive an injection of nature’s sweetest high, I say love the moment of it, the season of it, but don’t expect more of it or perpetuation and don’t even – if possible – label it. Inhale it deeply, because flowers smell sweet, and flowers prick, and flowers wither. Forever is a dangerous word by itself, though. I believe in forever. I believe in God, in Heaven, in Hell and in eternity. But I also currently live on Earth, and I believe in time and humanity and seasons. The waves of sweet and sour and all the flavors between – they’re all on an invisible clock, and maybe you can’t predict its timing exactly, but you can be sure that it is finite.

Creative Living

It seems the things which brings the most meaning to our lives also make them the most unbearable.

Why is it that we need creativity so very much? Is it our extreme desire for individuality? Do we derive some distorted meaning from our ability to be uniquely clever? Why is it that creativity is so often accompanied by misery? Life is often ironic and cruel this way: making us need the thing which destroys us. For truly I need to be creative to live, to exist with any degree of satisfaction in this world, and yet the more I succumb to this desire, the more depressed I become, the more drained, the more in need of release from this box we call living. And maybe that itself is the answer. Creativity becomes too great for this world, for this life – leaves us with such intense longing for something much greater than we have seen that it is both depressing and inspiring – depressing because we have not seen it, sometimes believe we can never obtain it, and inspiring because we believe something more exists – even if only in our minds. And yet the more we chase this, the more danger we put our lives in. Because in these lives, it is much easier to succumb to the depressions than the inspirations. And the inspirations we create in this life – the new – that beyond the already discovered, known and created – tends to be still so short of the inspiration that exists – what we know we can create – and the things which yet lie in wait within our heads waiting to be fulfilled. And so creativity is always a constant frustration. For the thing which propels us farther – our dreams – are the motivation for a better self and larger future but also the thing which we do not have. And always want.