Re: Abood's blog
Reply #14 - October 01, 2011, 04:35 AM
Twenty-three years of life / I remember
Twenty-three years of life, twenty three years on this planet, twenty-three rotations around the Sun. I can’t say I know what my first memory is, but I can say that I have many of them. I remember my first crush, I remember my first date, I remember when I started sexually experimenting. I remember when teachers told me I’m smart but need to put in more effort, I remember believing them, I remember believing in myself, but not giving a crap about schoolwork. I remember spending time doing independent reading when I was supposed to be studying for school. I remember the pain and depression that comes with being a teenager, and the pain I had to inflict on myself to cope with it. I remember the music I used to listen to to help me get through another day, and the people who helped me get through it. I remember the trouble I got into in school, I remember how many detentions I had, how I got close to being suspended, how I got close to being expelled. I remember the arguments I had with my parents about my future, and how I had to straighten the fuck up and study, study, study. I remember how I owned everyone and showed them that I believe in myself and was able to prove it.
I remember when I got my driving license and felt free, free to do whatever I wanted. I remember when I used to sneak out in the middle of the night and drive with my best friend everywhere, nowhere, just hang out, drive along, watch the sunrise on the beach, enjoy life – really enjoy life, feel it, feel alive, breathe its air, the air of freedom.
I remember when I started questioning things. I don’t know how or why I started, but I guess in a sense I’ve always been a sceptic, a questioner. I remember looking out the window when I was twelve and wondering why I was expected to respect authority, why I was unable to question what people say, and why I had to love abstract things such as my “country”. “Your country raises and feeds you,” people would say. “But my mom does that,” I would think.
I remember when I moved out and started feeling homesick, when all I wanted to do was go back home. That’s when it dawned on me what having a “home” really is – that thing I took for granted all along. That’s when I realized what being uprooted truly meant, having all your past, all your memories just evaporate. You stick to everything you can, cherishing everything, every memory, every possession that reminds you of a past that will never come back. That’s when I truly realized how precious life is, how much of it just slipped under me while I was unconscious. Where did my life go? What have I done with it? Where is everything? Everything had a whole new meaning to it. I would go back home and look around my room, looking at things not just as things, but as things full of memories, things with a past I experienced, things that were once a part of me, memories embodied.
I remember when I was seventeen and my questioning became even deeper: What’s the purpose of life? How do I know God exists? Big questions started coming up, scary questions. I started having dialogues with myself, I felt crazy, started dealing by joking around with myself about them. After much reading and much thought, after many days and nights spent thinking, I just had to accept the truth, which opened up a whole new Pandora’s box. I fell into unprecedented depression – I remember the days I couldn’t get out of bed and just wanted it all to end, I remember the times I just wanted to lock myself in my room and could barely read a few pages, didn’t want to speak to anyone. But more importantly, I remember my first spiritual experience, the experience I had reading a book I had found on the street, like a Godsend. Camus spoke to me like no one else could. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide,” he said. He was speaking to me. I was convinced. The connection I felt reading the first few pages of his essay was mystical. I felt high, soberly high, like nothing I had ever felt before. That essay opened a whole new world of experiences, a whole new level of consciousness. Since that day, I haven’t stopped feeling spiritual experiences, feeling connected to everything in a way that cannot be explained, only be experienced.
I remember the amount of time, amount of energy I spent trying to figure out what it is that I want in life, what it is that drives me, going through so many things, falling in and out of passions… always finding something new to pursue, always trying to convince myself that that’s the thing I truly want, but never feeling dedicated or perseverant enough… and I remember, years later, out of the blue, realizing that I’m happy, content, that I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for all along. I don’t know how I did it, but I know I did, and that it changed my attitude toward everything. When you would give up everything just to dedicate yourself to something, that’s when you know, you just know, that that’s it, you’ve found the answer.
I remember when it first hit me that I am happy, not because of any higher power, not because I have somehow found an outside meaning to life, but because life itself is full of meaning, full of beauty. Freedom is the true source of happiness, the realization that this is my life, and no one else’s, that I am free to do with it whatever the hell I want, and that every day I wake up is another day that’s mine and mine alone, mine to shape, mine to seize, mine to live.
There aren’t many things I know, but one thing I’m certain of: I’m alive, alive in the fullest, alive in the most real sense. Every time I laugh, every time I cry, every time I’m happy or depressed, every time I’m melancholic, every time I’m feeling connected… I know I’m alive. I just want to scream into the empty distant and hear this life echo back at me.
Topic: Abood's blog