Eleutheromania

Art by: Charlie Davoli

Eleutheromania (n.): “An intense and irresistible desire for freedom.”

Let’s run away.

Pack our bags and fill the car with gas, fill our eyes with stars. We’ll wave the city goodbye in the rearview mirror. Let’s drive through the night, have the music as loud as we can bear, tendrils flying away in the cold night air, leaving a trail of our journey, our youth. Let’s leave all our problems behind, like used maths books we never want to hear about.

We’ll jump over fences and stop at the next small town. We’ll doff our names, because where we’re going, they’re not important. Where we’re going, you’re just a person among so many others. A star in the milky way. To go from the city where everyone is always trying to be someone, and to sink in the comforting darkness of anonymity…our friends wouldn’t believe it. But there are whole other lives waiting for us out there. Worlds at our feet waiting to be discovered. Laughter hidden in the light filtering through the leaves.

Send a postcard to your family and let them know you’re alright. And when you’re done, let life begin again, the way it should have all these years ago.

Forget about the phones, we’ll take photos with one of those disposable cameras, or not at all. Don’t worry about the deadlines, the deposits, the 5 year plans and boring relationships. Leave it all behind and let’s find home on the road. Let’s be wanderers and make friends twice our age. Let’s try everything the world has to offer, let’s create memories. We’ll stop by the beach and watch the horizon at night. We’ll even catch the first light of day, watch as the darkness suddenly turns into light, how the world changes entirely in just a few moments. We can give it all up and never turn around. We’ll point at airplanes and try to race them to the skyline. Lounge on balconies and soak up the warm afternoon light.

We’ll be fine.We’ll be free.

We’ll tumble down life like paperboats on a rainy day.

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Listening to:

All Anyone Can Do

Art by: Kim Min Ji

All the days were the same, tinted with tentative happiness.

Until today when my comfortable, sheltered routine crashed and I had to say goodbye.  And I realised I had taken my time for granted. I had let my days flow by, frame by frame like in a film roll. All the while knowing explicitly that each day was a stitch in the tapestry of life and that ultimately, each would affect the overall picture. You see, life does not just happen now, it also happens in retrospect. It is not a mere succession of days, no. What you do with your days becomes what you do with your months becomes what you do with your years becomes what you do with your life.

But I let it all go by me, like a powerpoint presentation I wasn’t remotely interested in. I chewed on a pen, doodled a little, wrote some terrible poetry and daydreamed, almost waiting for it to end. But then the presentation came to an end and it was like I had suddenly woken up, anxiety again master of my mind, and I realised I had missed out on something too important.

If I know one thing, it is that you should not take Life and Time for granted.  You can waste either if you want, but waste it knowing the value of what you’re wasting. And well, not all ‘waste’ is waste. Not all days need to matter in the way the world defines it. You don’t need to save the world everyday. You don’t need to save yourself everyday. Some days are just for existing. For being warm and cozy and to hug the people you love a lot. Some days are for movie marathons that last 9 hours. The days that don’t matter are important.

But don’t take Time for granted. Don’t think you have all of life to do this thing. You never know when the world is going to turn over on its axis. You never know when you’ll have to say goodbye—No, you never know which goodbyes you’ll never get to say.

All anyone can do is try very hard to not have regrets. The rest is not in our hands. Beyond that, there is nothing that we can do. And though there should be defeat in this, I find only solace. If I had been able to do more, maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to. The weight and power of the universe are burdens too heavy for anyone to bear.

There is only this one thing I must do: I must try very hard.

The hardest I can. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s not my fault. All anyone can do is make the days count. All anyone can do is try. And why should we not? We only have the one chance at trying. And if we don’t try for fear of failure, we lose by default.

 

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Note: This is Day 15 (!!!) of my NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge. You can find the previous entry here.  I’ve also written on the theme of Time before, so you can also check that out 🙂  Also, is the illustration above art of ‘The Little Prince’? Yes, yes it is.

The Promise of Youth

Gif from: Howl’s Moving Castle

This beautiful life is no longer without consequence. Time has begun taking its toll out on you, dear. The late nights are now mapped out on your face, the sorrow weighing down the skin under your eyes. The memories of us have turned into sadness, who would have known?

Who would have known that one day on a roadtrip with no destination would change us so? You see, not even Youth is without consequence. Every happiness is to be paid for. So now we are sad adults, you and me, experiencing not Life, but the drudgery of everydays, reminiscing. Reminiscing about a pair of teenagers, wild and eternal, whose footsteps echo ever so briefly in the hollows of our chests.

Perhaps this is grief. Perhaps this is regret.

Because we killed them. The people we used to be. The dreams we used to have. We gave in to the world. We bowed to the storm and let it strip us of all we were.

So we go through this cruel existence, paying the penance for our crimes with unhappiness and misery. If you are miserable, then their deaths will mean something, right? If you feel hollowed out, soulless, then it is because you deserve to be, right?

Right?

But even now you appear right when I have scrubbed my memories clean of you. In the supermarket, outside a café. Grocery bags in hand. Sadness in your eyes. And for a moment there, I see the spark of the 17-year old you used to be. I see this tingle of Life that wants to awaken. And for a brief minute, Life allows us this repose. This breath of Youth that erases the fine lines and the great walls alike. And all disappears. As though Life had an undo button, a ‘restore to previous version’ option that could take us back to that summer when we were 17. Where the sunlight was warm on our faces and our days were boundless. The grass was tall, and the pink carnations swayed in the wind as the nearby brook ran its course.

But you chose, long ago. So you turn your head and in a heartbeat, take the sunlight away with you.

Devouring Time (A Rainy Day’s Epiphany)

Gif Source: Pinterest Artist Sadly Unknown

It rained suddenly.

I was a little stunned by the cold droplets hitting my skin, but you darted right away under the almond tree. And I followed you, somehow I always did. We had umbrellas in our backpacks because we knew the weather was capricious. But we didn’t use them. We were young and foolish, and maybe we wanted a little Time.

When you are as young as we were then, you want to devour Time.

Not a drop, not a morsel could go by unsavoured, untasted. I realise now that you either devour Time, or you don’t. Time is not something that you can save up, it is either now, or it will be never. It is like a flower that is left to wither if you don’t pick it.

And it was always now. Back then, it was always now. Always now.

We were not in love, but we were young, we were laughing, we were sharing fears, as though the rain had melted our feeble adolescent walls away. Our dreams were bubbling to the surface—loud,unashamed. Our vulnerable hopes were shining bright under the canopy of leaves. Our thoughts about Life floated like mist all around the tiny bubble that had formed around us and that somehow contained our worlds.

We were devouring Time, you and I.

I swear, in that moment, Time did not own us.

And that’s how I want to remember you, that’s how I want to remember me: Devourers of Time who didn’t even know what they were. We were too busy living to question what it meant to live.

And we never even noticed that the rain had stopped, and that the sun had started shining again.

Adult Life Is Hard

It is here again, this feeling that makes me want to flee.

Back to the hearty breakfasts, the sounds of honest laughter, Grandma’s hugs and the sweets that would drop from her hand to yours under the table. Days of simple happiness and sadness wiped away with a single kiss.

Adult life is so cold. It is a time when even dreams become burdens that stack up on your back. Dreams depress more than they encourage. They serve as reminders of all you have not accomplished, because you’re what, 20, 23? And you’re nowhere near where you thought you would be. Nothing is going to plan, nothing is going right. You don’t even know what you want to be and somewhere along the way, you’ve lost sight of who you even wanted to be. Now it’s just deadlines and survival. You have to work but you’re young so you also have to have fun but you’re also supposed to fall in love now so that you can get married at the right age later. And then there are also those dark feelings that inhabit you and that you don’t really know how to deal with.

But somehow, all your friends seem to be doing fine, judging by all those Instagram posts. They have internships, and they’ve even started their own companies, and you’re just here, with all this fire in you that you don’t know what to do with and you’re trying, trying, flailing pathetically at this point. Anything. You would do anything to just move forward a little. But the most depressing thing is that it actually feels like you are doing anything, everything and somehow nothing all at once. But the Universe just doesn’t want to acknowledge that. It’s like the Universe just wants to blow away that flame within you, to extinguish that fire you hold.

But it’ll be okay. Things are always more difficult in the moment than in retrospect, you’ll do better, you’ll get better. Your luck will turn, and your work will pay off. It has to, right?

An Overthinker’s Nostalgia of the Present Moment: A Road Trip Epiphany

Some photos from my own road trip.

Some photos from my own road trip.

Sometimes, I think that all you need in life is Adventure, and people to share it with.

Because there are some days when you don’t need to have much. Some good food, some music, some smiles. The view that unrolls like a film reel as you stare out of the car window, nodding your head at the music filling the space around, relishing in the thought of : “This is my youth. This is how I am spending my most beautiful years.”

And already, the moment seems like a perfect memory, like a photograph that’s already yellowing, already worn at the edges from pulling it out of the album so much. It is one of those moments that are so beautiful that you already feel nostalgic about them and they aren’t even over yet.

So you try to hold back all the sands of Time that sift through your hand, because you’re so scared. Because good times don’t happen often. Because happiness never lasts too long, never long enough. Because you don’t know any better than to overthink anything good that happens to you. Because there has to be something. It can’t be that easy. It can’t be that good.

But you cannot stop Time…

You cannot stop Time, but you can enjoy it.

You try to grip onto the sands of Time so firmly that you do not know how pleasant it can be to just stop and feel it run through your fingers.

It is, as you may have guessed, easy to say but much more complicated to put in practice. Living in the moment, before being the simplest thing, requires so much effort.

So, like me, you try to anchor the memory, not for always, no, you know better now, but for one moment, just one fleeting instant, one ephemeral stretch of time. So you take out a camera, snap a photo. You immortalise a moment, a mood, an age, a version of you, a picture of happiness. And then you go back to enjoying the feel of Time as it slips through your fingers, as the evening sun on your face plays out into the colours of the setting sun.

Life is finite, but Oh, how beautiful it can be.