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How many people would fall in love if they’d never heard of it before?
And if they did indeed fall in love, would it be the purest form of love? With no expectations, no ideals, no dreams about how they want their love to be, what would love look like? Would people fall in love at all, or is that a romanticized western ideal?
Do people force themselves to believe that their feelings are akin to love? Just because they think of someone else, does that mean they’re in love?
What is the natural progression of love? Do we know how to love, to the fullest and most authentic extent?
On the same wavelength, why do people dream the way they do? Are dreams really just expectations others have for us mixed with the admiration we have for others? Would kids dream of going to space if we didn’t have astronauts?
Do stars make wishes on fallen people? Does the sea ever tire of waving to a race too uninterested to care?
We never know our flaws until they’re pointed out or until we think back on ourselves- so how do we know where to improve? Will we ever actually be what others expect us to be, what we expect ourselves to be?
Despite all of this, I still long for a day when I meet the person who will help rearrange my pain in a fashion that feels like I can finally take all the breaths I haven’t allowed myself, the breath that I spent all of my previous moments trying to catch.
I want to be defined by the love I’m willing to give, the love I have given, the love I’m currently giving, not by the love given to me. I am not a product of love or a product of hatred but rather a product of my own creation. I am the only person responsible for molding myself into the person I am today- nobody else is.
The classic argument of nature versus nurture is a tired one, and one with no true resolution. One could argue that the way we function as a society is a result of the other members of society, another could argue that it’s all genetics, some could argue that it’s both but personally I think it’s neither.
I am the only person responsible for myself and I am the only person of whom I’m responsible. I have no moral or ethical obligations to act in any specific way- every one of my actions is up to my own choice. No outside influences are responsible for the way I am today.
If I were to take a moral alignment test I feel that I might come out of it as chaotic neutral- I have no feeling of loyalty to any form of power, no person other than myself.
If it were possible for me I would be entirely self-sufficient, but alas, I am forced to participate in a capitalistic economy, buying and selling until the day I wither like the roses on my grandmother’s dining table.
I wonder, how many millions of people never take the time to analyze themselves, to analyze the way they fit into society, the society they live in? How many people are mechanical products of those around them, adopting the personalities of people around them, of faces in the media?
This non-attachment of mine is not a way to ignore others, rather a way for me to learn more about myself and about them. I’m not doing so to keep myself safe, to prevent myself from being gashed by the gnarly claws of society, but rather to allow people in of my choosing without allowing them to destroy my independent self, the me I keep entirely for myself and no others to see.
One day I will die, as will every other person who is currently living. How I want to spend my days I am only partially aware. I know for certain that I want to spend my time being true to myself above anyone else- I owe none of myself to them. I needn’t feel guilt for the suffering of others, yet I still empathize, which is more than I owe anyone.
People are so obsessed with making themselves look good for society that they don’t take the time to actually make themselves good. When they cast out their own struggles, their insecurities, their demons, they have a tendency to cast their whole beings out as well, and it’s a marvelous sight to see.
Watching not from the sidelines but from my own place, I can see person after person tearing themselves apart, gnawing at the grips of their sanity, clawing their way through an endless cycle of suffering in life only to never reach the nirvana they’d long since dreamed of.
When we say we love someone, do we mean it because they make us happy or because we make them happy? Chances are it’s the former, choosing to remain as relentlessly greedy as many humans are, opting for their own self-satisfaction and not the true bliss that comes out of watching another’s eyes light up when you say just the right thing.
I’m unsure of the logistics of human interaction- what is it that drives us to speak to someone, to say the words we end up saying, to express the emotions we do?
Why force ourselves into roles we don’t necessarily want to fill?
-Excerpt from Sakusa Kiyoomi’s journal