When?
When did I become not enough? For myself? For you? For the system? When did I stop being able to charge on, appearing fearless. When did I stop seeing myself as a role model for others, even though I was always searching for one for myself? When did I start functioning so tightly within the system? When did I start accepting good enough?
Is this what happens when you grow up? Do you stop dreaming? Is that what it is to stop being naïve? Is this my transition into maturity? Accepting that I will be miserable, just like my mother, just like everyone seems to end up? Now you say "Not everyone ends up miserable." "Really?" I ask you. Do you really believe that? What makes someone miserable. If you've forgotten your dreams, does that make it okay that you never achieved them? If you don't remember what it really means to be alive, does that mean that you don't have to admit that you're not really living?
[ edit: If you don't like art-related metaphors, you might as well stop reading. If you're annoyed that I see life through metaphor, stop reading. ]
Life is made through contrast. High key or low key, it doesn't really seem to matter. You only know what you're looking at because there is contrast. How do you know you're happy? Is it because you've felt sadness, or because you've never felt anything better, so this must be happiness?
We only know where we are when we are fluctuating between extremes. Not necessarily hitting each extreme each time, maybe not even most of the time, but every once in a while. That's what lets us know where we are. Contrast. Highlight and shadow. So then, I ask you, "What is comfort?" It almost seems that by definition, comfort is somewhere safely between the extremes. Somewhere where the fluctuations can't get you. Somewhere that's consistent. Home at 5, dinner, sitting by the fire cuddled up and reading a book for the evening, going to bed. Never having to worry. Never having to be too stressed, or too hungry, or too cold. Never having to be too anything.
Comfort is boring. Why do we seek it then? Why do we constantly seek it? Maybe you don't call it comfort. Maybe you call it happiness, or success, or any other substitute word that expresses what you see as the ultimate reward in a perfect world. So why do we seek this boring comfort? Because feeling alive is too difficult. Feeling alive implies euphoric highs and depressing lows. Forever bouncing between the extremes, forever feeling contrast. How would you appreciate warm sun and cool rain if you didn't know that farther in each direction, there were sunburns and piercing ice?
I don't know about you, but given the choice, I would choose feeling alive over feeling comfortable. After being comfortable for so long, how do you even know what comfortable is? After a while, you have to create your own contrast. If you're comfortable in light grey, you make the slightly darker grey into black and the slightly lighter grey into white. If you're comfortable at a 7, you make your 6 into a 1 and your 8 into a 10. You do this, even though you've told yourself that you're comfortable. Even though you've told yourself that right there, with your 7 and your light grey, right there is perfect. You do this because without that contrast you're stumbling blind through a world of grey. You have no highlight, no shadow. Without contrast, you can't see the world around you.
Comfort shouldn't be a goal. It's one thing to be able to pay the bills and put food on the table. Nothing's wrong with that. But comfort... Comfort only spoils and dulls the senses. Comfort only makes us take things for granted.
Strive to live, and see the contrast all around you. Don't strive to be comfortable.
Is this what happens when you grow up? Do you stop dreaming? Is that what it is to stop being naïve? Is this my transition into maturity? Accepting that I will be miserable, just like my mother, just like everyone seems to end up? Now you say "Not everyone ends up miserable." "Really?" I ask you. Do you really believe that? What makes someone miserable. If you've forgotten your dreams, does that make it okay that you never achieved them? If you don't remember what it really means to be alive, does that mean that you don't have to admit that you're not really living?
[ edit: If you don't like art-related metaphors, you might as well stop reading. If you're annoyed that I see life through metaphor, stop reading. ]
Life is made through contrast. High key or low key, it doesn't really seem to matter. You only know what you're looking at because there is contrast. How do you know you're happy? Is it because you've felt sadness, or because you've never felt anything better, so this must be happiness?
We only know where we are when we are fluctuating between extremes. Not necessarily hitting each extreme each time, maybe not even most of the time, but every once in a while. That's what lets us know where we are. Contrast. Highlight and shadow. So then, I ask you, "What is comfort?" It almost seems that by definition, comfort is somewhere safely between the extremes. Somewhere where the fluctuations can't get you. Somewhere that's consistent. Home at 5, dinner, sitting by the fire cuddled up and reading a book for the evening, going to bed. Never having to worry. Never having to be too stressed, or too hungry, or too cold. Never having to be too anything.
Comfort is boring. Why do we seek it then? Why do we constantly seek it? Maybe you don't call it comfort. Maybe you call it happiness, or success, or any other substitute word that expresses what you see as the ultimate reward in a perfect world. So why do we seek this boring comfort? Because feeling alive is too difficult. Feeling alive implies euphoric highs and depressing lows. Forever bouncing between the extremes, forever feeling contrast. How would you appreciate warm sun and cool rain if you didn't know that farther in each direction, there were sunburns and piercing ice?
I don't know about you, but given the choice, I would choose feeling alive over feeling comfortable. After being comfortable for so long, how do you even know what comfortable is? After a while, you have to create your own contrast. If you're comfortable in light grey, you make the slightly darker grey into black and the slightly lighter grey into white. If you're comfortable at a 7, you make your 6 into a 1 and your 8 into a 10. You do this, even though you've told yourself that you're comfortable. Even though you've told yourself that right there, with your 7 and your light grey, right there is perfect. You do this because without that contrast you're stumbling blind through a world of grey. You have no highlight, no shadow. Without contrast, you can't see the world around you.
Comfort shouldn't be a goal. It's one thing to be able to pay the bills and put food on the table. Nothing's wrong with that. But comfort... Comfort only spoils and dulls the senses. Comfort only makes us take things for granted.
Strive to live, and see the contrast all around you. Don't strive to be comfortable.