Why do I write these words when I know no one reads them? My answer to this has gone from conviction to purpose to a lack of understanding. I could stop right now. I could have stopped yesterday. It would not have made a massive difference in anything—my life, perhaps, but what is one person among eight billion?
In many ways, I have been making meaning out of nothing. The things that get me excited are the insignificant parts. I looked at a picture of a singer recently, who has a picture of himself on his album’s cover in his heyday, and all I could think about was the passage of time, how two people who look almost nothing alike are indeed the same person only separated by decades. Or the fact that it is a sunny day outside today. Why does this matter so much to me? When I can safely assume, it does not matter to anyone else. People care about their money, their dreams, their little make-believe of the next shoe from some multinational corporation, and here, I get excited about a poem I do not know the writer of. Money matters little to me, maybe because I have always been able to earn my share. At least, until now. This juxtaposition of being fully aware of how easy life could be with some more of it and yet not being able to care about it feels like something is fundamentally broken in how my mind processes things. And this is but one example of the gross irony that my personality is, or perhaps, has become.
I work diligently without wanting great success. I write prolifically without wishing to be published. I love deeply, and yet, I have no wish to be with someone. Purposeless action—this is all my life has amounted to thus far. I have done so much, seen so much, made strides and leaps, and to do what? You tell me. I do not know the answer to this looming question. It plagues me day after day, but it also frees me. I have no shackles of expectation on me. I cannot say I am imprisoned. The world is open to me.
But are you also not arrested when you have nowhere to go?