My mind pulls daily in a this or that row. Should I do this or Should I do that. Back and forth between decisions. Which is better? Which is worse? This or that? What is heavier? This or that? Which is riskier? This or that.
Fighting what I can control and unsure what I cannot. Was it this or that? Go here or there? They say having a choice is a grand thing. A blessing. It’s also a great responsibility you must not take for granted. So should I do this? Or should I do that? This one? Or that one? Farther? or Nearer? My brain is in a constant pendulum.
Back and forth it sways. So many decisions, so many consequences. Few rewards. Just the back and forth of life and the consequences of every action, every thought and every movement. To do this would mean you’d lose that? To do that you’d lose this. To make a decision means you can’t have it all. Life.
The truth set before your eyes but you can’t figure out if it’s door number 1 or number 2. The good or the bad? You’ve seen so many lies you can’t distinguish what’s accurate and what’s not.
To gradute high school and go to college. But that doesn’t always happen. Many are brought up with it as the truth and the rest find out it’s not assured. College and the immediately a job. Same thing. So you take time and look within yourself. Is it this? Or was it that?
One day the pendulum’s violent swings will come to a halt. If i stop it suddenly the gears in the clock will break, but if it gets to fast the pendulum with fly off into the distance. So what is one to do?
I can see the negative and I already understand the positive. Though I still wonder why it’s unaccepted to still want the one action. It’ll never happen. I wish it would but it won’t. So i must learn to indulge in the selfish and blend in like i do in this world. While at the same time struggle to keep an eye on the pendulum.
4 comments
Your writing is very beautiful and touching.
You wrote a simplistic and optimistic scenario though. “The truth set before your eyes but you can’t figure out if it’s door number 1 or number 2” If it would only be just two doors… Things would have been simpler. A pendulum is an unfit metaphor for life, as it moves in two directions. It’s one dimensional, either left or right, unlike life, which goes in all possible directions.
The paragraph above is just a literary answer to your writing which means it’s devoid of any comment about the context. When you do address the context, well… All I can do is emphasize with you. Every choice we make affects everything. Choice is sometimes more a curse than a blessing. When one is given infinite options, infinite possibilities and infinite outcomes, he might get confused. He might, just like I do, refrain from choosing at all, due to the fright of losing so much. This way of action is obviously silly since it’s yet another infinite loophole! Deciding not to choose anything is by itself a choice thus rendering this whole thing as a paradox.
The only solution to this infinite problem is the acceptance of giving up other things in order for you to achieve something you want. Heh, it’s easier said than done, obviously. I chose to live – I lose my sanity, my freedom, my strength, my will and pretty much everything that defines me except one thing – Caring for others. I must learn to accept the consequences of my choice otherwise I will be driven completely mad, or as you said, “…but if it gets too fast the pendulum will fly off into the distance.”
Giving up things is hard, but sadly it’s the only way.
You’ve spoken the truth no doubt and from within my situation it does seem a this or that. But I do wonder if there’s something other than the sway that I’m missing because my mind is a big “blind” or curtain in my way. When I think of moving out (when the time comes) I ask myself should I stay here and move, or should I go farther away from home and move. And when I get there should I aim for something simple for employment or try to take what little money I have and try and do another trade that is what I want while being employed. And the last (and I’m making it more simplistic as you mentioned about my writing earlier) if I’m employed, and taking a new trade, and living in a small home or apt on my own how do I keep my sanity together? Maybe that’s the actual trade off? Because I know from just doing small things it doesn’t take much to tire me out and stress myself out.
Lots to question but in the end I really have to find some type of starting point that’s safe even if it needs to “seem” safe I suppose.
Well, your questions are easy for me, in an ironic way.
My sanity, my will, my choice, my freedom are all taken from me. I don’t have to mind them anymore when battling this world, I’ve got nothing more to lose. All these were robbed from me, by myself I guess, the moment I chose for others, I chose to live.
I take the pills prescribed to me because that’s what others want me to do, I will go study at a prestigious college and university because that’s what others want me to do. I will go and work and live the world as others would want me to do… I will be happy, because that’s what others would want me to be… I will be a puppet which dances to their every will and whim.
This is my path, this is the path I chose, more or less… The path I have is a direct result from the concept which I hold dearly, that I must not harm others.
How long will I be able to sustain myself purely on this concept? I don’t know… A year? A decade? Or perhaps even a life time? What I do know is, that I will never be.
This is my way of dealing with questions, I no longer do as I wish, I stripped myself of choice just to deal with this world. It’s the only way I have.
As I wrote about a year and half ago:
I’m miserable…
I can’t show it anymore but I can’t keep it inside.
I think I’m going to decide in their favor. I just can’t let them know the truth.
Yet again I choose for other people.
I’ve been told many times that I should start doing something – for me.
All these people who tell me that fail realize the truth: Nothing is for me.
Everyday when I wake up and get out of bed is for them. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t be here, I would have killed myself already.
Soon that won’t be enough for them – getting out of bed that is.
They will expect me to do things, to study, to go out, meet new friends etc. I will do that to keep on the facade I built.
I don’t know how much longer I would be able to hold up. I can see my fall coming very shortly.