Somewhere along the way, I lost it.
While I was surviving Life, I lost its savour.
Got too caught up in the Doing that I forgot to Be. Gotta meet my quota, gotta pay the bills, gotta get a boyfriend, gotta get married, gotta have kids. Why do I do all these things that enable me to live, when I have so lost the desire for Life itself?
It was so easy when I was a kid. All I wanted was to travel. To visit Paris, climb Notre Dame, fall in love in Sacre' Coeur. The want was so strong I could taste it. Even now, 20 years on, I can still feel the ghost of that old desire rippling through my heart.
I've done all that, and more. And have slowly grown complacent, fat and contented in the knowledge that I've achieved my childhood fantasies. And ignored the fact that while childhood fantasies are all well and good, there are grown-up fantasies that have yet to be fulfilled.
And therein lies the problem.
I have absolutely no idea what my grown-up fantasies are, or even what they should be. The vagaries of life have worn me down, putting up walls between me and my goals even before I know what my goals are. There's never enough time, enough money, enough opportunity to do the things I want to do (although at this point I have no clue what I want to do. The very suggestion that I can't do what I want is enough to put me off any idea completely) And so I amble on, not unhappy but having a sense of disquiet, that something just doesn't fit.
This post isn't to announce that I have had an epiphany and will tell you (at the end of this rant) that I have suddenly gained clarity and would like to ride an elephant across the Pyrenees, or live among the Yanomami in the rainforests of South America. So sorry to disappoint.
I will probably live a clueless, desire-less life for a little while longer.But even without a goal, there is something I can do in the meantime.
Follow my passion.
The thing that has been a shining thread of joy running through the warp and weft of my life. The one unchanging thing that I turn to, again and again, when the highs and lows are simply too much to bear.
Which is, ironically, what I'm doing at this very moment.
Mood:
Contemplative
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