Monday, October 31, 2005

Seeing the light



'Seeing the light' doesn't always make things bright, in fact, can make things even darker.
It can take just a moment, the smallest fraction of a second, a millisecond for it to happen. And when it does, it slaps you awake. Fast and hard.


Dreams are quite lethal in this way. You find a small happiness, a little murmur or whisper of your heartbeat, a spark igniting in your heart, and somehow you end up falling, into little thoughts and dreams. Little by little you find yourself adding more into the dreams and find yourself soaring higher and higher. Eventually you wonder what has happened to yourself. You find yourself smiling all the time, laughing out of the blue, seemingly for no reason, yet you know the reason and keep it to all to yourself. You relish everything in life. You love waking to the new day. The vibrant sunlight, the beauty of God's creation, all set out for you to enjoy and admire. Even the wet soggy weather you find pleasure in. You bask in the showers of the heavens and feel like letting it all run through your hair, down your cheeks. You find yourself standing under the moon's light just dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. You, in the midst of thoughts, find yourself having stopped and standing still in the world of the night, with a quiet content smile. You encounter nights in which you look forward to sinking into the realm of unconciousness, and yet somehow they pass sleeplessly, tossing and turning in a multitude of emotions..happiness.. hope... wonder... curiousity... confusion... restlessness.. until ceasing to think, drifting into that final abode of sleep.


It's what keeps you soaring, soaring, in the world of dreams unfalteringly, and almost carelessly. when just in one moment, on little thing comes racing up at you and suddenly, quite too fast, you find yourself in the reality that dreams are just dreams. And you simply aren't flying anymore, but rather falling, falling into the coldness of reality. So fast, you cant react at first. In a dazed state of shock, you wonder whether it really did happen. But soon it sinks in, and you realize that it wasn't imaginary at all but rather your dreams were.
You wonder, where did you lead yourself astray? where did you go wrong? You doubt yourself, your reason for dreaming. Maybe in dreaming, you soared too high and far from what really was there. What you may have had at one point in time maybe you really had lost later on but were too busy dreaming, blinded, innocent, ignorant. You put faith in your own heart's murmurings, but maybe too much. In some sense you were fooling others, by keeping that secret behind the quiet smile, but ultimately you were fooling yourself, and consequently making a fool of yourself.


But somehow, you're calm about it. It hurts, lots yes, but yet, there's that quiet calmness that takes it all in. Perhaps you always knew this possibility existed. Maybe while soaring the heavens, there was part of you still cautiously treading the realms of reality. And this part of you is what keeps you almost stoicly going.


It hasn't been the first time you've experienced this ongoing battle of appearance versus reality, and the path of yesterday has adequately geared you for the thorns of today. You had once shed tears of sorrow again and again, it abated. Then suddenly you had found yourself silently dropping tears of pure happiness; you now determine that, today on, there will be no tears. The biggest dreams a heart could conjure up would be dismissed, sent away, tearlessly.


But somehow, it doesn't work the way the mind set out. The heart leaks through the barrier of apathy. The same walks, where weeks gone by had shared the scenery of your dreams, now tug at the heartstrings in the sheer darkness of the night. The silence is interrupted by the yet insistent murmurings of the heartbeat. You try to quell it, but in a moment, almost as fast as the moment your heart seemed to break, that moment the light slapped you awake, you break, and vulnerably, under the same watchful moon, cry out the disappointment and hurt. You want to sit right there, amid the swaying of the trees, upon the carpeting grass, and curl up and cry, cry, cry against mother nature's embrace. But you keep walking and subdue the throbbing insistent heartbeat, and let the coldness of coming winter's wind dry the tears before you enter again in the world of people.


Again, comes the question: why bother with dreams when they take you so far from reality? One can live otherwise, without dreams perhaps, but most doubtedly. Dreams are the extension of hope. Dreams colour the canvas with the essence of hope yes, and in a way we know what we wish for. Everything in life is done in hope. We do everything in hopes of something. The student studies with hopes of being a doctor, a teacher. We eat in hopes of reenergizing our bodies, and enjoying the palatte of taste. We walk in hopes of going somewhere, of reaching a final destiny.


Again, while dreams can lead one astray, this doesnt mean one day, they wont come true.It's this faith in a future of the true dreams being fulfilled that should keep us going.
They break, and it hurts when it does. One shouldn't dwell needlessly on what you've lost. The thing about most dreams are that they are only projections of what we desire, in the present or future; in a sense, you never had 'it' to lose it. The framework of dreams is built with a network of expectations. Unfilfilled expectations are the precursors of disappointment. Disappointment hurts and sobres the spirit but in the same way pain works, its these wounds that make the spirit stronger.


A person gone without without these experiences - without pain, disappointment, hurt- is a person much more vulnerable to falling and never getting up again. But the person who has come across these obstacles is the one who learns how best to move past them and go on even stronger.


But never deny yourself the time for emoting what you've gone through. Don't hide the tears, the hurt. Let it seep out of the system in its own healthy time. Every human was given a heart to feel, to love, and a mind to carry out the functions. When you hurt, admit it, you'll get over it faster. Don't have self-pity, rather.. sensible sympathy for yourself.
Dont let yourself fall into depressive moods. Keep yourself busy with activities and quite surprisingly you find the hurt dissipates faster.


If you have a heart, you will feel pain in your life.
And if you feel pain, its because you have a heart.


Maybe again, when you dont expect it, you'll hear that whisper of your heartbeat again, the spark ignited in the heart, and you'll find yourself flying again, in love with life, with a new zest.


And dreams will come seeping, floooding in, and one day, come true.
With a brilliant burst of light.