For Sammy
For Sammy, because she keeps bugging me to write something to her for Valentines day.In the current day, here in the West, we have the magnificent luxury of not knowing what we want. Our forefathers didn’t know where their next meal would come from. Life was a struggle for survival, and in many parts of the world it still is. It was a rarity to see a man sit down on a stone after a hard day of hunting mammoths, adjust the furs covering his body, look at the rest of the tribe and say: “You know….. I’m depressed. I really don’t know what I want.”
Our forebears didn’t have many desires. They didn’t have a lot of wishes, whims or longings. But they had instinct and that was good enough for them. They knew when they were hungry and they ate. They knew when they were horny and they mated. They knew when they were angry, and they killed.
Nobody wanted to lose weight, or ever wondered what’s for breakfast. These ideas must have seen incomprehensible to them. You lose weight? You die. You wonder what’s for breakfast and your arrow misses the shot.
They weren’t really preoccupied with love either. Scientists place the birth of the idea of romantic love to be around 800 years ago. Imagine that! Romance is a goddamn toddler in the history of humanity. You just mated with whatever was at hand. There must have been an abundance of love though. Love was a matter of survival. Although I cannot imagine there actually being a name for it. You simply felt, and it felt good. And if it didn’t feel good you could bet your ass that the whole tribe was in trouble.
We have it better. Our survival is all but guaranteed. When we get hungry we open the fridge or order a pizza. When we get cold we turn up the heat. Through millennia of struggle our forefathers have left us a world that satiates our instincts. We are rich. We are provided for. And we have absolutely no idea how to handle the situation. We can deal with the outside world. The outside world not only provides us with plenty, it forces it down our throats. With it’s culmination in soup kitchens, churches, social security and police stations, society has become the Great Mother providing for us, protecting us and nourishing us. Nobody will ever go hungry again.
And so we sit down on a rock, adjust the furs covering our body, look depressed and wonder what the fuck we want. Yeah, we have it a lot better.
The harsh and stern face the outside world showed our forebears has changed into a gentle and caring smile. With her right hand she cares for all our needs, but with her left hand she dumps a load of insolvable problems on our hearts that must have seem trivial, or even ridiculous to those whose genes we bear. How do I make my life meaningful? How do I find love, creativity and happiness? What’s for breakfast? How do I raise my children right? How do I lose weight? Why am I not loved? What’s my place in the universe? And my all time favorite: What the fuck do I want in life?
We are assailed from inside the dark recesses of our soul with a constant barrage of desires, drives, lusts, instincts, questions and longings. An amorphous mass hunts us in our dreams. We cannot distinguish what it is that clamors our attention but we feel the pain when it hits us. And so when we are young we follow in our forebears footsteps and hunt for the things our desires demand. Money must be the answer so we hunt for that. Power must be the answer and so we get us some of that. To be loved must be the answer and so we point our arrows at that. But as soon as a desire is satiated ten more pop up. It’s out of our control, it’s never enough. Until finally we wake up one morning and the bathroom mirror shows us a tired, frustrated and old face. And through the lifeless pupils staring back at us we can see the grand abyss of despair glaring back at us. The emptiness that can never be filled.
We sit down. We hold ourselves. And we cry.
Some of us find out at this point that every success they had in life was only fuel for a conflagration sending sparks of new desires that need to be quenched. Some of us are so stumped that all they can do is stare into the darkness of their souls and wonder if this is all there is. Some of us cover their eyes and try to forget the emptiness they’ve seen, jumping back into the fray with a wild-eyed despair. Most of us start popping pills or seeing a therapist and a surprisingly large number of us just give up, swallow a gun or just exist for the rest of our lives.
------> I'LL CONTINUE THIS WHENEVER THE FUCK I FEEL LIKE WRITING AGAIN<---
EDIT: God that's sick sick sick corny girly mushy music. (Yeah picked it out myself.) (Yeah love Groban.) (Yeah got all his CD's. Now Fuck Off)
posted by The artist formerly known as the Bulb. @ 9:11 AM
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