Adjusting to reality.
Art : US again.
By Sakuan.
ADJUSTING TO REALITY.
Hello EMILY.
This war of mine is a tough one, I bet you understand or think you do but let me tell you a story about a little boy who started using drugs because he was born into it, such a sad reality but what can he do, what can we do as a society, the answer might seem as clear as day but if it was that clear then the issue would not be there in the first place, he turned out to be what he was because of who he is. Society will always judge him for this behavior, some will lend him an ear but only because they pity him, and one thing about the boy is that he hates when people pity him so he never accepts their help, sympathy could be a double-edged sword, and so is every other desirable virtue that society needs. Nobody other than those like him will ever hear him out or understand what he is going through, he tries to reach out for help but the rope is always too short to reach him in the ditch called reality that he is in, as much as I would like to pull him out of the ditch, the rope is always too short to pull him out, and when the rope is of enough length he rejects my help, he rejects societies help, what a tragedy.
His father was a chimney, he smoked a lot inside their own house, home. All he saw growing up was his hero doing something that he came to find out was bad for him, but it was too late, now he curses his hero for lending him a bad habit, how fair is that? One may ask, in my book this is unacceptable but who am I to speak I got vices of my own, what a life I have, what a time to be alive, what an era, what an experience this reality has been. His father started smoking as a way of coping when his grandmother died, he was thirty-three when he started and two years later his son was born, his son tried smoking when he was twelve because that’s all he saw from his father who was his hero. Smoking didn’t seem to be all that wrong at all to him. We all tend to follow in the shoes of those we look up to, they say don’t meet your heroes, but what if you live with your hero, what if your hero is responsible for taking care of you. After twenty years of smoking his father died of lung cancer, he was fifty-three when he passed. After twenty years of smoking the little boy now a grown man is diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, he’s only thirty-two. A generation was probably cut in half because of a habit that could easily be avoided, so we think, but I don’t think it’s that clear cut of what we can do about it, we think we do know but do we really know? Is it my fault that I am what I am, how did I come to think this way, how did I come to believe in everything that I believe in, what is life coming to, what has life come to that I write of such dark themes. People are people not because they are people but because they HAVE to be people.
BELIEVE ME.
Please trust me, please believe me, please stand by me, please give me my dues, please take care of me, please take care of my loved ones, please, please, please be a fan of me, I demand you to give me your attention so give it to me, pretty please. They say, or so I have been told that I care too much about things that shouldn’t concern me, how is that my problem? I had a choice to either stay this way or change my ways, before I deeply get into that I will let you know that I didn’t choose to be this way in the first place, choices are hard to make as you already know, especially when the choice you have to make will most likely change your life forever or if you don’t have a clear answer for a question that life begs an answer from you, it is sad to think that I of all people can succumb to such dilemma, trust me this is not an ego thing if you were me you would think the same thing. They expect you to have answers on deck at any time on everything, I didn’t go to school to learn about life and its natural ways, some things in life you learn the hard way, some the easy way, and sometimes if you’re unlucky you don’t get to learn anything at all, life can be cruel, life is cruel, cruel indeed to a point where you find yourself curled up in bed, all alone crying yourself to the cousin of death, sleep.
When you feel like people don’t appreciate your genius what do you do? Do you keep on going, do you try to convince them why they need to follow you or do you shake yourself up and give up when you are faced with a challenge, maybe all these options can coexist. Sometimes I wonder how the rich feel when they don’t have to worry about petty financial issues, I know they have other problems as they are human beings, but petty financial problems aren’t one of them and that is the point I am trying to get at. The life of the rich and the poor, what more can I say about this? Believe me, when I say this, I hope one day I become financially free, I know it’ll happen, or may I say I know it might happen. You know, little old me with a beautiful wife, and children and a family of my own, so hard and too much to ask for or to even think about considering what I’ve come from and the strides I’ve made to be a better human being. One of the bigger problems that come with success is how to handle it, it is a challenging fit to have especially if your whole life all you’ve known is poverty. To think that little old you who had a dream at one point, a dream of being financially free, and now you get to live in your dreams, literally, I wonder what the feeling is like, would I give anything to have that feeling, would I? That’s a hard question considering I don’t like making any promises and this for some reason makes me more accountable for the things I tell myself or other people I might do for them.
THOSE FEELINGS.
These feelings can’t be explained, there are certain things or occasions that bring about certain feelings that I can’t explain. My understanding is that we all have these types of feelings, some of us are way better at explaining them and some of us aren’t.
Joy is one of these feelings, I can’t explain what joy feels like to me, the only way I can explain it is that I’m happy, but happy is just a word and not an explanation. What does it mean to be happy? Personally, I don’t think I can explain the feeling in great detail, all I can say is that I feel good, I feel empowered, I feel like my life is worth living, I feel like my life is worth experiencing, and the sense of worth then motivates me to do things that I think will make my life better, it brings about some sort of motivation in me and I love it.
(The devil)
Then there is the feeling of self-guilt, this is mostly based on my morals and virtues, especially when I do something that concerns other people, I beat myself up more than anybody else can or ever will and I think that is the problem. At times I get envious of those people who can do wrong or say something that may other people and it doesn’t bother them whatsoever. For me it’s different because it sticks with me, I guess this stems from how and when I was nurtured by my family, extended family included. It’s a good thing in the grand scheme of things because it keeps me accountable for my actions and I also get to feel the guilt deep inside me that it discourages me to do or say dumb things to other people, sometimes this can be hard because speaking the truth most times than not means offending the person the “truth” is being conveyed to. We speak our truth based on how we understand the so-called truth we are spewing, I speak my truth most of the time and the truth isn’t always polite or pleasing to hear, even though other people might learn something from my truth when I present it to them, I still feel the burden of guilt about it later when I’m alone. The devil himself comforts himself in my head and asks questions like, “who are you to think you are so special, what gave you the audacity to make the next person mad or upset, you should have just shut my mouth, what did you gain from all that?” Even with these voices I never shy away from speaking my truth when it matters, the easy thing for me to do would be to shut my mouth when I’m encountered with such a situation and move on without saying a word, this would most definitely save me the burden of self-guilt. The reality is it only saves me from one guilt directly into another, regret, the regret of not knowing what would’ve happened if I spoke my truth, I’d rather feel the guilt of making someone mad through the truth, than have the guilt of “what could have happened if I spoke my truth,” linger in my head for years to come. One I can always apologize to them later and the other one I get the misfortune to live with the thought of what could’ve been, the latter is way worse in my opinion, trust me the latter can weaken and easily break the strongest of men.
I say all this because life can be what you make it, life is not about what you see rather what you choose to see, life is not what you hear rather what you choose to hear, I battle my evils every day because I know that is not who I am. From you to others your life is not who you are but who they think you are. My lil’ Ol’ pretty life, what a gift.
Always yours,
JON.
XOXO.
Currently reading [God is Not One by Stephen Prothero]
