There are days when nothing happens, and sometimes, this is all we need, but when we are so used to putting out fires, we may just set things ablaze only so we have something to do. Now that I have written this down, I wonder if I have written this before, and if not written it, perhaps, I must have said it, and if I hadn’t said it, I might have thought it before. I know this because some thoughts cut so damn close to your soul; you know they are your own; they could not have come from the outside. We remember them, even if we forget everything else, but regardless of where this thought came from, I have written it down for good reason. Many a life has been ruined by this need alone—to have something to do when the going gets easy. People tend to forget that the whole point of dousing the flames was that things were on fire. We have an ever-unfulfilled need to feel useful, and a tendency to ask the same questions time and again.
All through the day, I have asked myself: what next? It seems the impatience in me wants time to pass faster, but we can wish for that as much as we want; it does not change that time moves at its own tempo.
Now, I sit here, in a lamplit room with golden silhouettes and golden whiskey, at the end of a day spent well. A day spent well but also in agony simply because I happened to sit in the sun for a little too long, staring at the beige sky overwhelmed by pink clouds. When one does that, one tends to ask inconsequential questions. And had I stayed there for a little longer, I would’ve gotten my answer from the get-go, but I was too impatient and had to get things done.
If I had stayed a little longer, I would have watched the sky darken once again as it does, and I would have known that things come and go—especially joy. And I would have found a way to touch the grass and remember the moment as it was, and years from now, I would have told someone: in the evening, on a day when nothing was wrong, the sky was pink, and it was all okay.
There was time yet for things to go wrong. It was all okay then. It was the only thing that should have mattered.
But I was too busy asking questions, and now, here we are.