I am in love with the present. This is a peculiar problem. All the world is chock full of crowds drunk on dreams, living in the daily despair for the pursuit of what they will never have, hanging on the promise of paradise, unwilling to accept how even paradise is laid brick by brick. This sobriety of having no dreams takes some time to set in, for all of us have been drunk on them for far too long. When it does, it brings about a peace you cannot much explain.
One might say I have grown complacent, but I have grown anything but more ravenous, my appetite for happiness continues to grow, only the dreams are now much more real, they are grounded, and slowly but surely, I am on my way to building them, a day at a time. That is why I am so in love with the present now. As much as I pave the road to wherever I am going, I would not want to be anywhere else.
It is not up to us to not go forward. Time does that for us. But we can take a look around and be engulfed in where we are. I feel at home in this town I live, with the people I live here with. I no longer dream of impossible castles in the clouds or a love fit for legends. I dream of not things but seconds and minutes, days, and how I want my time to feel. There will always be a house to build, but what will you do in it? That is the question no one asks. It is the only one worth asking: what will you do with your time?
A gilded house glistening with gold where no one does anything, after all, is not a dream but a nightmare. People think they can substitute this responsibility all of us have—to spend our time—with dreams, but they forget the common denominator. No matter how high you build your castle, no matter what love you find, you will still have to pass the time. You cannot speed through it, nor can you slow down, but you can find a way to enjoy it, and if not that, to make it bearable.
There is no person as rich as the one who prefers their days as they are, with all their tribulations and blessings. All else is an empty vow, or put bluntly, procrastination.