What's the point?

Disclaimer: A inactividade tinha-se apoderado deste blog, muito porque eu costumava filtrar os meus pensamentos. Costumava ponderar demasiado sobre se aquilo que escrevia seria material para vir para o blog ou não. Eu continuo a apreciar a liberdade de em censurar a mim próprio, como método de protecção, mas acho que a auto-censura extrema acaba por me tirar o prazer de escrever, mesmo que seja sobre temas estúpidos e desprovidos de interesse para terceiros. Assim, resolvi levantar esse filtro, mesmo que me venha a arrepender mais tarde.

(Antes de mais as minhas desculpas a quem possa vir a cruzar-se com este blog e não consiga ler um texto na língua inglesa, mas há momentos em que não me consigo expressar em português)

When everything seemed like a lost cause to him, when he felt like he didn’t belong to this world and everyone around him seemed to be as far away as the furthest corner of the furthest universe; when no one seemed to understand and everyone told him the same repetitive speech “You can do it, man, you’ve got it in you! Hold you head up high, be strong, go out and shine!” In a time when everything looked like it was going nowhere, and he could feel nothing but lost, when he knew nothing but pain and suffering – despite his momentary earthly pleasures in the form of a coffee cup or a chocolate bar – and he couldn’t look ahead without the feeling that misery was going to be his only long-life companion; in a time when every single one of his thoughts made him feel even worse than the last one, and none of them seemed to go away, no matter how hard he wanted to believe that he wanted them to go away. This was the time when he realized he was a firework, waiting to ignite and explode, right in the face of his life. Right in the face of everything dark and cold and sad around him.

Breaking free was not easy. The speech he heard so many times about being special and having something other people didn’t and having to be happy and doing whatever made him happy and the whole happiness bullshit just started to get on his nerves severely. The questions would often rise in his mind “Are we all really living to be happy? Do we have to be happy to have a fulfilled life?” It’s hard to say that we live to be happy and oftentimes those who left a mark were not as happy as we might think. Whether that was meant to be his case or not, however, was not known, and many would be prone to jump out and say “Why would you want to be big, if you could be small and happy?” The answer wasn’t very clear in his head, but the need for greatness was something that had grown with him and inside of him. He wanted to make a mark, somehow. He thought of all the most famous people he could remember as a bunch of losers. He wanted to be remembered for eternity, even after humanity had vanished. His ambitions were not realistic, many might argue, but he had been a dreamer. Misery started to replace those dreams, though, as he grew older and found that his greatness would never be enough to match that of the great Ancient Greek philosophers or the Ancient Roman Emperors. While most might not have goals this high in life, to him, it made all the sense in the world that anyone would strive for this kind of recognition and respect. This became the biggest structural damage in his life. The 8 and the 80. The small and the large. He could never be as big as he wanted to be, so nothing else would satisfy him. What was, then, the point in being alive? All of his friends and family would say: be as big as you can, for you can be a lot bigger than most. This was still not good enough for him and “small time ambitions” were not in his life plans. Many might be happy with a lot of small things. He, however, would not be more than miserable with several big things. He couldn’t have the biggest! This consumed his soul for years and the realization that he had a lot more than most was taking its time to show up in his life. Suffering is futile. So he kept on being as futile as he could be, not caring for all the material possessions he had, but bearing the suffering, the feeling of underachievement.

“You’ve done many great things! You have no idea how many people would give most anything to be in your position”. He felt sorry for those people, as in his mind they had no idea how mundane it was to achieve what he had. Why was it mundane? Well, what was he getting for what he had achieved? In what was did it make him feel good? Why should he feel good? These questions often crossed his mind and though he tried to answer them as well as he could, he would never get a satisfactory answer.

More than unhappy, he was unsatisfied. He did not consider himself a perfectionist, as he knew perfectly well that he didn’t always try his hardest. Indeed, he would very hardly try his hardest, for nothing was worth it. The 8 and 80 paradox took over his life and he seemed to choose to live with the smaller side, as the larger one was not meant to be.

The realization that this was the time to ignite and glow and explode in the face of everything he knew, however, didn’t make him want to do any of those things. Some would say this was due to his extreme laziness, others would say he lacked self esteem and didn’t believe his capabilities. He’d just respond “what’s the point?” His lack of faith in life and everything around him had reached a peak and it didn’t look like it was coming back down. The fact that he couldn’t reach the top of what he needed seem to make him lose the will to fight for second best.

Now I say this guy needs to open his eyes, see the world and realize that his screwed up mind is not helping him. Funny thing is… I am this guy, so I say… what’s the point? What’s the point in being better than you, if I can’t be the best me I can imagine?

If only someone could tell me.