Forgetting to Remember and unaware of what you always have known.
In stead of stumbling through words that are incapable of summing up exactly how I feel, I'm going to quote other people who are making the same attempt to express themselves. They can say it for me and there's plenty of comfort in that.
"Speed is one of the major themes and ingredients of the twentieth century. Some of us have gone mad with speed, accelerated into lives that have become impersonations of a highway. Speed has proven to us, unconsciously, that no matter how fast we go we are still not escaping ourselves. Once we realized this catastrophe, the twentieth century followed logically." -Timothy Levitch
"Anticipation kills."-Jean Klein
"Everytime we fall out of the moment it is a catastrophe."-Huang Po
"Why were we born amongst mirrors?"-Frederico Garcia Lorca
It's good to know I'm not the only one in this world that is avoiding myself and my life in the present by distracting myself by living in the comfortable nostalgia of the past or denying myself by living in the endless possibilities of the future. Living in the future allows me to be who I want to be without putting in the work. As long as I can imagine the horizon is in view, I can put off getting there and as I'm living in the past I can avoid feeling the pressure and promise of tomorrow. With enough imagination you can simultaniously plan for the future and glorify the past creating a false feeling of accomplishment and comfort. Days can turn into months and months into years without you actually living and being an active participant in living for a single day. Suspended comfortably in the art of distraction using the speed of the future or the solidity of the past to paint over the reality of today. I can admit it. Most of my life I've tried speeding things up in order to avoid and bypass the pains and realities of present time, as if time has some sort of carpool lane that me and my hopes and dreams can get into to avoid the truths of today. I've tried slowing things down in an effort to make time reverse back to when times were good and life was ideal. Living life in reverse gives you the illusion that you could of changed things, slowing the past down and pausing it where it hurts so that you can take a detour or a side street and avoid the inevitable and relentless imprints and impressions time will and is making in your daily life. But time always catches up, and time waits patiently for you to catch up to it. You could avoid your whole life by creating traffic jams. Speeding up and slowing down creating the illusion of living because it feels like you're moving. And you reason that as long as you're moving then you're getting somewhere, when all you're doing is running driving around in circles. If you'd just step outside of your comfort and let go of your desires, you would find yourself in the present. For me the present is so overwhelming I avoid it at all cost. I've reached a point in my life though where distraction is not an option anymore. There are people who depend on me and I'm doing an injustice to them by avoiding the reality of my life. I am doing an injustice to myself by lazily and cowardly avoiding living. Living life every day takes effort and awareness and I, like most people, are so caught up in our hopes and dreams and comforts to realise we're sitting still watching our life as a movie. Preferring illusions and mirages to the real thing and the real us. We are disillusioned and delusional. I'm going to make an effort to live from now on. I'm going to become an active participant in this whole living experience thing. I'm not gonna get passed up or pass anything up anymore. By living for today I hope to flow better with the universe, thereby having no need to worry about the possibilities of the future or entrap myself in the confines of the past. Let the past be the past and let the future take care of itself. I wanna get comfortable in my own skin again, feel what it's like to truly be me again. The times that I've been able to do this are the times that I remember the most. My memory of my life is loosely sewn together pieces and fragments of time that make up a skeleton of a person I only vaguely associate myself with. The times I spent actually living my life are far and few between, but they're the only times worth remembering, the only times I can really feel as being mine. The rest is just a movie I like to watch sometimes. See, I'm rambling on and on trying to express my need to live right now, for right now's sake. I guess expressing it, or trying to at least, forces you to reflect, which is defeating the purpose of what you're trying to be by making it something you're trying to do. So now that I've said it, just like the people I quoted above, now it's time to BE it. At least I know I'm not the only one who finds TRUE living so difficult and who is aware of the damage and the tragedy we all create by being non-participants in living. Hopefully somebody read this rambling and found comfort in not being alone and comfort that they aren't the only one who's too afraid of themselves and life to truly live it. So here's another quote on not being alone.
"The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of consciousness."-Albert Einstein
...but that's a whole other story isn't it.
"Speed is one of the major themes and ingredients of the twentieth century. Some of us have gone mad with speed, accelerated into lives that have become impersonations of a highway. Speed has proven to us, unconsciously, that no matter how fast we go we are still not escaping ourselves. Once we realized this catastrophe, the twentieth century followed logically." -Timothy Levitch
"Anticipation kills."-Jean Klein
"Everytime we fall out of the moment it is a catastrophe."-Huang Po
"Why were we born amongst mirrors?"-Frederico Garcia Lorca
It's good to know I'm not the only one in this world that is avoiding myself and my life in the present by distracting myself by living in the comfortable nostalgia of the past or denying myself by living in the endless possibilities of the future. Living in the future allows me to be who I want to be without putting in the work. As long as I can imagine the horizon is in view, I can put off getting there and as I'm living in the past I can avoid feeling the pressure and promise of tomorrow. With enough imagination you can simultaniously plan for the future and glorify the past creating a false feeling of accomplishment and comfort. Days can turn into months and months into years without you actually living and being an active participant in living for a single day. Suspended comfortably in the art of distraction using the speed of the future or the solidity of the past to paint over the reality of today. I can admit it. Most of my life I've tried speeding things up in order to avoid and bypass the pains and realities of present time, as if time has some sort of carpool lane that me and my hopes and dreams can get into to avoid the truths of today. I've tried slowing things down in an effort to make time reverse back to when times were good and life was ideal. Living life in reverse gives you the illusion that you could of changed things, slowing the past down and pausing it where it hurts so that you can take a detour or a side street and avoid the inevitable and relentless imprints and impressions time will and is making in your daily life. But time always catches up, and time waits patiently for you to catch up to it. You could avoid your whole life by creating traffic jams. Speeding up and slowing down creating the illusion of living because it feels like you're moving. And you reason that as long as you're moving then you're getting somewhere, when all you're doing is running driving around in circles. If you'd just step outside of your comfort and let go of your desires, you would find yourself in the present. For me the present is so overwhelming I avoid it at all cost. I've reached a point in my life though where distraction is not an option anymore. There are people who depend on me and I'm doing an injustice to them by avoiding the reality of my life. I am doing an injustice to myself by lazily and cowardly avoiding living. Living life every day takes effort and awareness and I, like most people, are so caught up in our hopes and dreams and comforts to realise we're sitting still watching our life as a movie. Preferring illusions and mirages to the real thing and the real us. We are disillusioned and delusional. I'm going to make an effort to live from now on. I'm going to become an active participant in this whole living experience thing. I'm not gonna get passed up or pass anything up anymore. By living for today I hope to flow better with the universe, thereby having no need to worry about the possibilities of the future or entrap myself in the confines of the past. Let the past be the past and let the future take care of itself. I wanna get comfortable in my own skin again, feel what it's like to truly be me again. The times that I've been able to do this are the times that I remember the most. My memory of my life is loosely sewn together pieces and fragments of time that make up a skeleton of a person I only vaguely associate myself with. The times I spent actually living my life are far and few between, but they're the only times worth remembering, the only times I can really feel as being mine. The rest is just a movie I like to watch sometimes. See, I'm rambling on and on trying to express my need to live right now, for right now's sake. I guess expressing it, or trying to at least, forces you to reflect, which is defeating the purpose of what you're trying to be by making it something you're trying to do. So now that I've said it, just like the people I quoted above, now it's time to BE it. At least I know I'm not the only one who finds TRUE living so difficult and who is aware of the damage and the tragedy we all create by being non-participants in living. Hopefully somebody read this rambling and found comfort in not being alone and comfort that they aren't the only one who's too afraid of themselves and life to truly live it. So here's another quote on not being alone.
"The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of consciousness."-Albert Einstein
...but that's a whole other story isn't it.