Past vs.Now
I was looking through my diary the other day... I wrote a lot in this diary three and a half years ago... back in the days when I was really depressed. I remember when I received the diary as a present from my then best friend, Emma... A lot happened over those three years following that diary, and the farther I've distanced myself from the first entry in there, the more sparse the entries have become.
I guess I'm not depressed anymore, and reading the words of that 17 year old girl in deep turmoil is like reading the insights into a very troubled mind. It makes me cry, because at one level, it's me.... on another level, I struggle to understand the thought processes that were so much more complex and intricate than the ones I go through today. Life seems so much more simple now, and reading those encrypted messages makes me feel a deep sense of sympathy... almost like that seventeen year old girl were here right now, looking me in the eye and asking accusingly - "Why didn't you follow your dreams?"
What could I say to that? Did I follow my dreams? I tried to for a while, before I realised that those dreams weren't compatible with the direction my life started taking... and I really tried hard. I tried hard to become a singer. But that image of a girl in a pretty dress touching her audience with song started fading, and in it's place, an image of a woman in a business suit, in expensive stilettos, rushing from place to place. Looking busy. It got to the point where a slight sense of disgust took over whenever I envisaged that girl on stage. I accused her "Is that all you hope to achieve? Do you want your life to peak over a period of five years, if you are lucky? What are you going to do after the applause dies down and you are wiping off your make-up backstage, knowing that in a couple of years - maybe even tomorrow, you'll be yesterday's news, and your job will consist mostly of grooming the new stars of the future?"
Yes... perhaps I have the voice of experience behind me - but the seventeen year old asks "What can be more important than dreams?"
For that... I have no answer. Dreams are happiness - they inspire you to act in such ways as to bring about happiness in your life. Songs used to come to me in dreams, I used to draw, I used to write long and disturbing stories and subtle poetry. Where has that girl gone? I pick up a pencil nowadays, and I take notes... I no longer doodle the images I see in my mind on the margins of my pages. But if there is one thing that pulled me out of those years alive, it was my dreams.
My relationship to my dreams back then was a deeply protective one. I really strayed off the path at one point, and what brought me back to life was a sense that my dreams were being deeply offended. There was nothing and nobody that I had a greater respect for - and my dreams were being violated.
Life is transitory by nature, and nothing is enduring, hence, I wish to thank my dreams, leave them, and my accusing 17-year-old self behind... it's time to move on.
I guess I'm not depressed anymore, and reading the words of that 17 year old girl in deep turmoil is like reading the insights into a very troubled mind. It makes me cry, because at one level, it's me.... on another level, I struggle to understand the thought processes that were so much more complex and intricate than the ones I go through today. Life seems so much more simple now, and reading those encrypted messages makes me feel a deep sense of sympathy... almost like that seventeen year old girl were here right now, looking me in the eye and asking accusingly - "Why didn't you follow your dreams?"
What could I say to that? Did I follow my dreams? I tried to for a while, before I realised that those dreams weren't compatible with the direction my life started taking... and I really tried hard. I tried hard to become a singer. But that image of a girl in a pretty dress touching her audience with song started fading, and in it's place, an image of a woman in a business suit, in expensive stilettos, rushing from place to place. Looking busy. It got to the point where a slight sense of disgust took over whenever I envisaged that girl on stage. I accused her "Is that all you hope to achieve? Do you want your life to peak over a period of five years, if you are lucky? What are you going to do after the applause dies down and you are wiping off your make-up backstage, knowing that in a couple of years - maybe even tomorrow, you'll be yesterday's news, and your job will consist mostly of grooming the new stars of the future?"
Yes... perhaps I have the voice of experience behind me - but the seventeen year old asks "What can be more important than dreams?"
For that... I have no answer. Dreams are happiness - they inspire you to act in such ways as to bring about happiness in your life. Songs used to come to me in dreams, I used to draw, I used to write long and disturbing stories and subtle poetry. Where has that girl gone? I pick up a pencil nowadays, and I take notes... I no longer doodle the images I see in my mind on the margins of my pages. But if there is one thing that pulled me out of those years alive, it was my dreams.
My relationship to my dreams back then was a deeply protective one. I really strayed off the path at one point, and what brought me back to life was a sense that my dreams were being deeply offended. There was nothing and nobody that I had a greater respect for - and my dreams were being violated.
Life is transitory by nature, and nothing is enduring, hence, I wish to thank my dreams, leave them, and my accusing 17-year-old self behind... it's time to move on.