The wood lay in the brown cardboard bag and as I picked up a piece, intending to throw it into the fire, I got the sense that I was disturbing the wood and that perhaps it didn’t want to be burnt, and then I was overcome with the feeling that everything I was doing was wrong, and that what if I was meant to live my life a different manner? I would never know.
I decided I needed something else to think about, so I did what I have always thought I should do when I needed inspiration – I went to sit at a coffee shop to look at people and create dialogues in my head. I’m not that strange, it’s not that I don’t have any friends to sit at coffee shops with me, but don’t you think it’s far better creating a different world sometimes when you get tired of reality? Even if it is in your head?
In my reality, the weathered man with the sad eyes at the next table isn’t sitting all by his lonesome self, pondering over his life and letting the emptiness eat him up from inside out. He is doing what I’m doing, he is seeking inspiration and will eventually find a mindset that will keep him sane. Or so my reality hopes for him.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an old woman sitting outside the café in her torn and tattered clothing, watching the world go by. Something compelled me to rise from my seat and approach her, so I did, and to my surprise instead of sadness there was a mischievous, insane sparkle in her eyes, like she had figured the world out and the people she was looking back into were mere mortal fools.
Excuse me, I said, I couldn’t help but notice the light on your face, what have you found?
Do you really want to know? She was teasing me.
My affirmative nod prodded her and she went on.
I have found that there are nice people and terrible people. I have found that sometimes there are reasons for awful things that happen and sometimes absolutely none at all. The nicest of people can get the worst of luck, and vice versa. I see all these people walking by with melancholy in their eyes, and I can tell they wish they were in someone else’s shoes. But with everybody wishing to be someone else, do you not see what we are? We are all the same. We are the same race breathing the same air. If you are sad today, there are many others sad with you – and despite this sadness there are millions of others happy. Therefore in the wider outlook of things, the balance of sadness and happiness, goodness and badness is perfect. This is life, and if you fight it or seek reasoning or otherwise, you end up in a spinning cycle of pondering and depression.
And that, she said with a contented smile, that feeling I feel when I think about it all, is what helps me sleep at night even when it gets too cold.
I decided I needed something else to think about, so I did what I have always thought I should do when I needed inspiration – I went to sit at a coffee shop to look at people and create dialogues in my head. I’m not that strange, it’s not that I don’t have any friends to sit at coffee shops with me, but don’t you think it’s far better creating a different world sometimes when you get tired of reality? Even if it is in your head?
In my reality, the weathered man with the sad eyes at the next table isn’t sitting all by his lonesome self, pondering over his life and letting the emptiness eat him up from inside out. He is doing what I’m doing, he is seeking inspiration and will eventually find a mindset that will keep him sane. Or so my reality hopes for him.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an old woman sitting outside the café in her torn and tattered clothing, watching the world go by. Something compelled me to rise from my seat and approach her, so I did, and to my surprise instead of sadness there was a mischievous, insane sparkle in her eyes, like she had figured the world out and the people she was looking back into were mere mortal fools.
Excuse me, I said, I couldn’t help but notice the light on your face, what have you found?
Do you really want to know? She was teasing me.
My affirmative nod prodded her and she went on.
I have found that there are nice people and terrible people. I have found that sometimes there are reasons for awful things that happen and sometimes absolutely none at all. The nicest of people can get the worst of luck, and vice versa. I see all these people walking by with melancholy in their eyes, and I can tell they wish they were in someone else’s shoes. But with everybody wishing to be someone else, do you not see what we are? We are all the same. We are the same race breathing the same air. If you are sad today, there are many others sad with you – and despite this sadness there are millions of others happy. Therefore in the wider outlook of things, the balance of sadness and happiness, goodness and badness is perfect. This is life, and if you fight it or seek reasoning or otherwise, you end up in a spinning cycle of pondering and depression.
And that, she said with a contented smile, that feeling I feel when I think about it all, is what helps me sleep at night even when it gets too cold.
