Shortness of breath...

We listen over and over the powerful advice of living in the present, between inhales and exhales, focusing our minds in one specific task, be it breathing or really just grabbing hard any loose thought that tries to travel far. Supposedly this control will bring us freedom, freedom from rush, from stress, from ups and downs and consequent sadness.

Then we get out again, and we try to stay with that calmness inside. To continue not to be in any rush, with a constant forgiveness and understanding attitude… till you’re fired because they want someone more energetic, and still you force yourself into numbness/coolness, you don’t have any food or can’t pay the rent because you don’t have enough money, but if you stay in the flow of nothingness things will fall into their right place, whatever that is, and eventually you just end up having only the present reality, the breathe in or not breathe any more.

Passiveness leads into “whatever” and in whatever mode, we act disconnected, we act on repeat. Whatever is when we’re tired and afraid, and we’ve actually given up.

“Then I’ll imagine”, she said, that’s the only way I can feel myself happier. I’ll use imagination. “Ah, you’re wrong”, imagination can also lead you into reclusion and loneliness. What you need is reality. Pure uncovered reality. That’s where you need to be in and feel, reality. “No…” said another voice, reality is made by others and the reality they share comes from their own imagination. Reality is really just our own interpretation of the world. Even the most scientific views of the world, are projections of self ideas, individual bets of hypothesis…. “Well, then I give up!” Or better yet, I choose not to think any more. But isn’t that dying?… Isn’t it wanting, real curiosity that keeps us alive?

Pain keeps us alive.

We need pain to change, to question, to feel lost and only after, in survivor’s mode, we grab on to what can really bring us to surface. Our last instinct is too survive, but our first reaction to sadness is the opposite. We can live our entire life holding on to a well disguised pain, just not to let us fall… so, let go, fall face down, risk it. Scream if you have to, but give yourself the chance to be forgiven and to start again. Fall to get up! We learn to ride any bike, skate, hey, just walking, by falling down over and over. And when we were told that its was too dangerous, or shouldn’t have been done, we questioned it. With age and routine, we get more scared of reinventing and challenging our beliefs. But so many times we carry more pain for not having shared that scary thought, that scary choice, for not having taken the risk.

“The unhappy person is one who has his ideal, the content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself. The unhappy man is always absent from himself, never present to himself.”
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Kierkegaard

To know ourselves, and feel what is, feel what we are, we can’t be the version for the easy listener, or the grumpy old man. We have to cry and we have to forgive, for after despair, the one thing left is possibility.