You Could Be Happy ...

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." - Jonathan Safran Foer 

I knew it would be hard, but not so difficult. And I haven’t felt like this for years – extremely angry, nervous, and afraid of new, repetitive days. Too tired to wake up in the morning, or unwilling to simply get up. I haven’t felt so lonely, useless and sad for so many Marches. Unable to write, to concentrate, to think. And this one week seemed an entire month.

My drug was my work. Now I feel like I have nothing. Just haunted memories, wandering in my head, trying to decide which ones are the real stuff, which ones were just illusions.

Someone dear to me sent me today the following link and I found myself in the image of the person who always helps the other. “Anger, denial and desperation”, yes, that’s exactly what I feel now. Self-reliance. Maybe this is what makes me so good in keeping up the work when others would have given up by now. But this is only one side of the cube.  

Life taught me that it is too damn short and it can end in an instant. Not just for me, for any of us. I am not good at words, at uttered, articulated words, at opening myself, but I promised that I would show to the others what they are to me and I would try as much as possible to be what I want them to remember me. People are not born to suffer, to just work-have kids-die. And I have always wanted to remember them this. And to give a hand to anyone who needs it. Reading this, letting myself feel my fury, I asked myself what I would feel, what would I take with me if tomorrow never comes, what people I would be sure that they made a difference for me. And I didn't like the answer.

You would think that when one always helps it will always be surrendered by friends and people, and these people will learn to be better, kinder persons. Will never hurt us. Never abandon us. Never forget. But it’s not like this at all, on the contrary. You see, people who help a lot tend to say a lot of “it’s ok” when it isn’t ok at all. We do want simple gestures in our lives, and it is not ok when they are not present. We don't want to be forgotten after a few months of going abroad. Or (feeling) replaced. We want to be called on our birthdays. Or not to hear every year that there was a Christmas and other people were on top of the list. We want to see people caring, not forgetting/calling/going out with you just when you are useful. We still want to feel from time to time appreciated. And respected. Not taken for granted. We still want to be asked how we feel, despite being there like solid rocks for others. And accepting everything. We are not like this, we just know how to hide our real feelings, we are better when it comes to wearing our masks. So good that we fool even ourselves. And as I previously said, we are extremely bad when it comes to speaking, to say through words what we want. We are still human beings, and sometimes, we are carrying inside our souls huge black rocks with us. 

The problem is that we don't say a thing. Just "it's ok" instead of "no, it's not right". We keep saying these three words, fooling ourselves that we don't feel a thing, and we build our depressions brick by brick. Feeling insignificant, replaceable, used. Receiving only the leftovers. We put one brick today, another one tomorrow, till we put so many bricks that we feel suffocated. And we explode to simple, meaningless things. The question is how do we get out of here? How do we learn to swim? 

Bridges

In my ignorance, and naivety, I had believed. In people, in kindness, in friendship, in a better world. In making a difference, in a two-way street. In my ignorance, and naivety, I dreamt of a better world, where human beings learn to be humane.

Deutschland was for me a bubble of air. Of fresh air, that I desperately needed. It was a mirror to a better, civilised world, which I carried inside me and secretly wished to be real. It was the country that I feel in love with, which showed me that yes, there can be a better world.

Human beings are way too superficial. Individualistic, blind, focus on the material part of life. I don’t think that there is a divinity to blame the things that happen to us; the only one who is to blame is us, our decisions, our trains that we didn’t take on time, our blindness in front of our fragility and our inability to think of our own consequences. The faculty that we didn’t graduate, the scholarship that we didn’t take, the courses that we didn’t end, the people that we were too afraid to let in our lives, the words that we were unable to utter on time, the job that we didn’t take. It is the butterfly effect that shapes our lives, the actions that we do, the actions of other people who contribute to our lives. If people made the right calls, stop caring of their own interests, and break that bubble of ignorance, do their jobs as they should be done, without hiring “acquaintances”/doing things superficial, yes there would be a better world. ... We blame God for our faults, for our ignorance, or when things go too far, when it is too late, instead of blaming us for every wrong decision.

6 years ago, 1^st of March taught me that life is too damn short and fragile. From time to time I ask myself what will I leave behind me. How do I want (my) people to remember me? What will it be my heritage? What will it be the difference that I made to the world? What have I taught, what have I learnt? What was the meaning for life for me? Will I be able to say ... 

"And did you get what 

you wanted from this life, even so? 

I did. 

And what did you want? 

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth." (Raymond Carver)

 ... “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” I have always been an artist, where philosophy and art had more meaning to me than the absurd routine of an ordinary human being. I have always tried to say a story – through my words, my gestures, my silence. I have always searched for strange, unique, colourful people. That was my strength and my rope, my bridge, and at the same time my sinking ship. And now, in my experience, and search for happiness, and meaning, I know that 90% of humans are too blind and materialistic, but I do still believe in the rest – in my people, in people able to make a difference, in kindness as a sign of humanity and civilisation, in that kind of friendship that teaches us that “simple, grey people come and go. And sadly, most of us are like this. However, best ones – full of colours, who think outside the box, and want to make a difference with and inside their lives – always stay.” And if there is somewhere in this world a better country, with the things that I strongly believed from the beginning, we should try to be that kind of people that we want us to be and to discover in our journeys.