There always seems to be such a very big gap between the things that I daydream about and my everyday life. I do not have any real fear of the future, or of change, or of dying without achieving anything by which society will supposedly measure what sort of a person I was. My fears swirl around living a life in which my dreams are more pleasant than my reality. Where the what-ifs and the might-have-beens take up more space in my memory than the things I did. So I am afraid of dreaming about things that might never happen. Things like being an author, since it is so easy to imagine never ending up as an author. In some ways the issue is that all I'd have to do is do nothing and my life would end up living itself and being empty and meaningless.
I also wish I could fly.
4 comments:
For my part, I have dreams, but because they are lofty, I fear that they'll be crushed, or that my own talents fall far short of the mark.
...I'm here.
I'll spare you the meaning of life as given by religion, since you don't believe in it anyway.
Life has what meaning you give to it. Your dreams are your ticket to making a better life for yourself, but first figure out what dreams are realistic. Being an author is a good choice. Since you are in your 20's you are most likely in college. Take a creative writing class. Learn the APA or MLA writing style. Ask for feedback from your teachers. Learn from your mistakes. Practice makes perfect. Writing in Wikis helps as well, when I was 20 there was no Wikis, only BBSes. Ask for feedback in the Wiki forums.
You should have common sense by now, and are following logic and reason. Take responsibility for your actions and behaviors, and if you do happen to make mistakes learn from them. Learn from other people's mistakes as well so you don't have to face the same consequences as they did.
Be friendly, help people out, you will gain friends that can help you when you need it as well. Learn to be part of a team, that will be important if you can learn to do that in college before you can get a job. Many employers want to see team players and more importantly team leaders. The more you help out others, the better you will feel about yourself. Just do it in moderation, so you have free time for yourself and your dreams. If you help out enough people, you will get a good name for yourself, which is good when you need references.
Stay healthy, eat right and exercise. If you do eat junk food and candy, do so in moderation. If you do a good enough job, you'll live to be in your 90's and see your great-grand children have children.
Take it from me, reality is harsh, and dreams are more pleasant. Make no mistake about it, just as I and others suffered, so will you. Just learn how to adapt to change, and how to handle stress, and manage your anger and other emotions, and find ways to channel your negative energy into positive energy.
Since you don't believe in religion, the best way to live on forever is to have children who remember you and pass those memories on to others. To create great works that will pass the test of time, and leave a mark on human beings for generations to come.
I am reaching 40 soon, and I was once like you when I was 19, and was agnostic, and daydreamed, and later suffered a lot. Good luck.
But what of my desire to fly?
What recompense can you offer me?
Looking back on this from some time after, I do find myself vaguely irritated at the long comment above. It is filled with the attitude 'I am older than you; I know more about life than you; I am offering you some advice, which is good advice, and will solve your problems'. It is also loaded with assumptions. I didn't say anything about living forever, I am interested solely in determining by what standards I may judge my own life a success or failure on my own terms.
Finally, for crying out loud, it should be incredibly obvious that I don't need to 'ask for feedback in the wiki forums' in order to learn how to write.
If I wanted to read Desiderata (which I sometimes do), I would just read it, not post on my blog in the hope that someone will deliver a generic form of it to me in longer and less poetic prose.
If, when I am older, I look back on what will then be my distant youth, I hope that it never inspires me to talk meaning at people like so many futile memories soon forgotten by disinterested grandchildren.
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