Sun was burning hot on that summer day as strong as it gets. The grass was dry and dead. Air didn’t move. Everything was still except for our hard breathing.
-Are you okay?
-Yes, just fine. I am only wondering if this is it. If this is life. If this is as good as it gets. I kept waiting for one goal after another to be achieved and I keep having goals yet getting to that imaginary destination doesn’t bring me peace and satisfaction. As if it’s only the beginning of a new journey, towards new destination, never ending spiral that brings me to the same point in my mind yet on another level. I do move yet as if that movement is in circles taking me into my better self ever so slowly, truly changing me slightly, apart from apparent movement and actions I experience. I am in constant movement in the same space all the time. Circling around my essence, never being able to change the course and escape the drive of desire and dissatisfaction with myself, never embracing my being, coming to the core. Circling around it in futile attempt to reach it and become one with what I want to be. As if that being is not even there, evading me as a ghoul in the dense misty forest of my ambitions and attempts to reach the ideal.
-You know, many people said that the meaning of a journey is not in the destination itself but in the means and ways of getting there.
-So I should embrace and cherish all the hardship, the pain, the suffering, and enjoy them?
-That’s implied. Pain is like fire for forging of our souls. If you endure strikes of the hammer of destiny, you will come out of it improved, purified and stronger. You should be thankful for the hardships and feel the life beating inside of you stronger than ever during them.
-It’s not that much about the suffering. I sort of enjoy it. As you said, it makes me feel alive. It makes me function. The trouble comes when the hardship ends and all that is left is that road behind me, crossed with many obstacles that don’t make me feel any stronger for getting over them. As if the results don’t match the struggle. As if the fight is more important than the outcome. As if the destiny hasn’t heard of fair-play and it won’t let me enjoy my small victories but keeps mocking me with them, as if it’s saying ‘Look, you pitiful being, look what you fought for. Was it worth it?’ and it never is. Every achievement seems so illusory, like I have been chasing a dream. I feel such sadness over my judgement. My will seems childish and left to chance. I feel as if I don’t have any power over the course of my life, as if my striving and choices are fundamentally wrong.
-You shouldn’t feel that way. Life is magical in its unpredictability and it usually gives you what you wanted in your deepest desires. That’s why it’s said to be weary what you wish for because it might come true.
-Exactly. That’s the part that frightens me the most. I met so many different versions of myself. I really do hate most of them and those that I respect now I threw away for some others that were more comforting at the moment yet that I regret so much now. All those wrong choices…
-Yet, here you are now. Beautiful, magnificent, sparkling with energy and life. Can’t you see that? All those bad choices made you what you are today.
-My thoughts, exactly. I could’ve been someone better, stronger, more capable to help myself and people around me and I do not feel any of that beauty and magnificence you are talking about. All I see is pain, as if my whole skin is one giant wound, as if my whole soul is tearing apart. I don’t want to die but I don’t know what I am living for. Hearing that you see me as someone special is really sad. Can’t you see me for what I am – nothing transforming into nothing constantly? How can you love me?
-I love you because you are me and I am you. I love you because you are the mirror of this world in which it reflects with such uniqueness. I will love you no matter what you become because you once were the essence of life embodied and for me that will never change. You may flow from one state of being into another but you will always be mine and I will cherish you inside me, as a part of me, as the world that you opened up to me.
-You might be insane, you know. – I said bursting into laughter. Yet life suddenly had meaning again. I had a purpose. It was there, looking at me with my reflection in its eyes.
Life was beautiful, once again, as so many times before and after that hot afternoon.
I just mustn’t forget that reflection. Never forget.