3/23

My midnight ramblings got a little deep last night.

Most people would describe stars as shiny. Sparkly maybe. Some would even say stunning. These are the people who really haven’t looked at the stars- I mean, really looked at them. To me they are far more complex than a single word could ever describe. When I look at the stars, it looks as though they’re poking holes in the sky; like the black coating of the night sky is really just a guise for something that lies beneath. Of course, I know this is stupid, as I’ve progressed past the third grade and know that stars are not shiny, sky polka-dots. But the hopeless romantic in me tends to wonder what lies beneath the black veil of sky. Are the light dots gateways to a better place? A different world? Who lives there and are they happier than I? Would I be happier if I lived there?

As a chronically unhappy and cynical person, I’ve often wondered what lies beyond the metaphorical black veil. In my case, the black veil being a particularly uneventful and pretentious hometown filled with particularly uneventful and pretentious people, and the white light being anywhere else with any capacity for substance. 

I’ve often contemplated running away from my problems and into the white light- whether that white light be in the form of a plane ticket or something a little more drastic. I’ve planned both contingencies out and have recently come to the conclusion that nothing will ever change- no matter what I do. 

I think this is because we live in a cruel world. And I’m not saying this for the sake of being a cynic but for the sake of my own sanity. Wherever we go we spin webs of problems and before we know it we realize we were too busy spinning webs of insignificancies to notice the bigger picture. Everyone is too preoccupied with their endgame- what they’ll get when all is said and done and what they need to do in order to get there. But when one endgame comes, another shiny and new endgame comes into view leaving us unfulfilled and searching for countless endgames until the day we die. And because of this we don’t see the beauty in how the sky glows right before the sun rises in the morning. We notice how we’re already running late to work and haven’t had coffee- but never the radiant glow of the sky.

We don’t notice. We don’t notice and that’s what’s wrong with everything. No one notices anything anymore because they’re too busy on a quest for validation. I’ve found that people need to be validated. Whether it be validation of intent, of actions, of motive, or even of one’s own humanity, everyone searches for it; whether on purpose or inadvertently. And this is the reason for the elaborate webs we spin. The danger in this is weaving an inescapable web, following fiber after fiber in hopes of seeing the sky again. But at this point the web is too elaborately spun for even the most competent of us all to escape. So we wander about our problems and flit from fiber to fiber to validate our lives as having meaning when in actuality we’re looking for meaning in all the wrong places. 

We as humans have it all wrong. We think the meaning of life is in our own happiness- or at least the pursuit of it, and we think that the pursuit of happiness is one big “to-do” list. But it isn’t real. It’s all just an illusion that we’re susceptible to because it’s the easiest thing to believe and work towards.

I’m not going to settle for what’s easiest to believe, though. I suppose I am fairly naive. After all, I still believe in the greater good. I sometimes get entangled in webs of my own making, but I think I'm starting to navigate myself out towards my own personal sky polka dots. I’m not sure I know anything really at this point, but I do know that the way I’m living- the way we’re all living- isn’t right. 

Author's Note

Sorry if there are a few typos, I wrote this at around midnight on a Sunday... AKA never a good idea. I really needed to get this out, so sorry that I'm kind of whiny. Feedback on my writing would be great, as I think I might try to fashion this into a prose poem eventually. Cheers, Charlie