Waiting for Godot
It’s been almost a month since I last wrote here. I’ve been mainly microblogging on Twitter, but I found that Twitter lacks depth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, but it’s also superficial. It’s like a cheap hooker when you want a passionate, loyal companion.
The title of the post says it all. Waiting has been the key feature of my days this past month. I have been increasingly busy starting March and the ball just kept rolling. Right now, I am typing this as I wait for my lecture to start. Earlier in the morning I interviewed someone for work, then had lunch with a friend, and now this. Today has been OK, not too busy compared to my typical days recently.
And the state of being busy excites me. It excites me because it makes time move quicker, but very soon this excitement turns into fear. Time moves too fast for me to understand it. I’ve always had this problem and I’ve said it over and over again in this blog: I don’t understand the passage of time. As I consume time doing things, I do not get the chance to fully absorb them or appreciate them, and then I find that they become part of the past. It’s this fleeting nature of things and time that makes me a skeptic. How can I know anything for sure when I do not fully grasp what I do, or what is done to me?
My biggest nightmare is to wake up one day and find that I am 50 years old and cannot justify my existence or the fifty years I’ve spent alive. What to do if a paralyzing fear of time keeps me in a sort of a twilight zone, where everything and nothing is possible? I hope that by the time I am 50 I’d have a good enough reason to be alive other than a natural expression of physical love resulting in my birth.
Take now for instance. I am waiting for many things to happen. I am suspended in time, barely getting by everyday on the hopes of a better tomorrow, and that better tomorrow may or may not come, but I wait for it all the same. I’m not static though, I am a planner and I like to think I am a doer. The one thing I can truly say about myself and not feel a tinge of deceit is that I am very focused, stubbornly so. It’s my only anchor as I wait.
Waiting is nerve wrecking. You’re here, you want to be there, but you can’t. Not just yet. You must wait. It could possibly turn your hair white especially if you’re not very patient.
As I reflect on my upbringing and life so far, I find that I have waited too long for change. Previously, I waited because I didn’t know that I could create this change myself. Now, I wait because I want to realize it to the fullest. It’s a fire burning inside my mind, eager to be let out and reflect its reds and oranges on my grey surroundings. It’s a pity that it should be leashed for so long, but one day it will be free.
It’s like a cheap hooker when you want a passionate, loyal companion.
Excellent analogy! Though it is unclear to me how you would know! Not saying that I would, mind you! :p
My biggest nightmare is to wake up one day and find that I am 50 years old and cannot justify my existence or the fifty years I’ve spent alive. What to do if a paralyzing fear of time keeps me in a sort of a twilight zone, where everything and nothing is possible? I hope that by the time I am 50 I’d have a good enough reason to be alive other than a natural expression of physical love resulting in my birth.
Tololy, it sounds to me like you are focused on externals. That’s perfectly normal at your age (that’s part of what makes being your age so fun!) but at some point in the future you are likely to come to the realization that externals come and go, and aren’t really very important in the overall scheme of things. At that point, if all you’ve got going for you IS the externals, you may crash and burn. That happened to me, and it happens to lots of people when they approach middle-age. I don’t really have much advice to offer you, but when the time comes you may want to try to focus on things that are more rewarding on a personal and spiritual level. You probably are too young to try that now, so don’t worry about it too much!