Are you going through a season
were life is slowly but surely passing you by? Every happening around you seems
to be nothing more than a recorded tape played over and over again. You see
yourself as a bystander, an observer, with little or nothing to contribute to
the happenings around you. Your passivity is sometimes so acute that you dread
the thought of being invited into anything akin to reality. You are just
content to watch. Now, I know that activity may sound to you like, the “hard
stuff”, but that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the little
things that make up our daily existence as social beings. Mundane things such
as a simple “hello”, good morning”, “how do you do”, can all of a sudden become
herculean and altogether demanding, exhausting your last drop of energy.
You just want to lock yourself up
in a sound proof, transparent bubble, from where you can clearly see your world
without encountering the risk of participation.
As you gradually sink into this
system of living, you become content with being alone, and you also become your worst
critic. Your reasoning ability is gradually reduced to solving daily problems
such as waking up, brushing your teeth, taking a shower and getting dressed.
Soon, you begin to drift and to lose sight of your dreams. Your dreams now seem
so far, far away; if you remember them at all. Now you begin to confuse what
you want, with what the rest of the world wants. Now you are nothing more than
a drifter. People’s ideas stick to you like a magnet. Your insensitive brain begins
to tell you, “Every idea is a good idea”. Soon, you become a pursuer of other
people’s dreams. Yours is fuzzy now. Lost in the distant land of depression,
self-pity and discouragement.
You want to wake up, shake
yourself up and live again, but you can’t.
People look at you and you smile back at them. You seem to them as one
who knows what he is doing. But you know deep down inside that you don’t. You
want to scream for help. You want to matter, to be relevant. But none is
patient enough to see the emptiness inside you. Everyone is busy. And besides,
you are doing okay; aren’t you? Sometimes, you are lucky to make a new acquaintance
who is “interested” in you. You are hopeful again. Maybe, just maybe, he will
be my savior. But alas, he is just a passerby, looking for someone with
something to offer. Someone who can help him advance his cause. Your articulate
exterior attracts him at the beginning. Then he sees you as you really are,
weak and “helpless” as he is. He disappears. You are disappointed again,
perhaps more than the last time.
And then you realize, nobody is
coming to save you. The truth dawns on you slowly but surely, like the gradual
peeling away of scales from your eyes. It’s disheartening. It’s heart breaking.
But it’s also liberating, because you also realize that if no one will save
you, then you must save yourself. All of a sudden, a strength you never knew
existed comes on you. You are hopeful again. All of a sudden you are strong!
And now you can teach anyone the
lesson you have learnt, that everyone is carrying a cross. No man can bear
another’s cross. To each his own. Therefore, you must be strong for yourself!
