This is a conversation. It is not a flow of semi-agreeable comments and recollection of the day’s events. It is the understanding of the meaning of what was said, and challenging it. Referring it into your own life and bringing out that example to see if it makes sense. Or embracing it; but not as a vague sentence that was spoken, but as an actual opinion that is based on time, experience, and observation. Whether it be right or wrong, who’s to say? But it’s the effort of understanding and progression that can keep me up with someone till the morning. Often I find that topics come full circle, but not in a repetitive way. It is more of a refined way. Like each time the subject is repeated upon it has more layers. And because of the basic relativity to the world you will find that by comparing experiences, although obviously not the same, the lesson is the same. This is the main difference between an experience, and a memory or part of a moment.
We’ve all been here. When you talk about a certain experience you always say it with some intention. An intention and a lesson. I hate when I’m talking about a moment, like about how I’m lonely, and I bring up an instance of sleeping alone and cold. And then the other person starts talking about the cold. They miss the point because they are listening to what I said. Not why I said it. Trivial conversation has it’s place, but it is defined by the ever present thought of leaving the situation. And it is very clear. For with each question you will receive a short answer, in which leads into nothing. And the saddest most pitiable fact is that I can probably recall all of the people and names, in whom I’ve had “real” discussions with. “Real” moments with. It really isn’t that everyone doesn’t have the possibility to be humanly contradicting and uncertain, but it’s the fact that most people don’t want to be. They find it appealing to be calm. Collectedly ignorant, blended faces that don’t question. My father once said. “One day there will be a point where we will have to just use the answers we’ve been given and stop questioning.” but he was only partially right, I have grown to realize. We need to take the answers we are given, use them to their fullest, and continue to ask questions. To doubt. To fail. In the moments.
Which leads me to the ever prominent phrase. “Live for the moments.” Do you really understand that? For the longest time I didn’t. I just basically understood that some moments were better than others. But now I understand, but it came with hindsight. Retrospect. In the way as, you know those times. When someone asks what you did last week. “Well, basically I worked and. Uh.”
Well that week will be another week that you will forget existed. That was just a measure of time. But the moments. In ten years what will I remember about this year? I will remember the Broncos losing to the Pittsburg Stealers in AFC Championship a game away from the Super Bowl. I will remember Saddam’s capture video, and the release of Martha Stuart. I will remember my little brother taking his first steps and learning his first sounds. I will remember that I had loved and lost. I remember these moments because they stood out in their fullest detail. How each event made me smile or cry. How each breath felt during them. I’ll remember how small the world was to me. Those were the moments that made up my year. Three or four days that stood out of three hundred and sixty-five. But I could tell you more about those three days than the rest of the months before and after.
And it’s these defining moments that so many people miss that make me search endlessly for one that stands out. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems that the world has put too many sweets on their grocery list. We aren’t getting enough of what we really need because we are all just to busy to enjoy the moment.
Even my parents. My dad just always seemed just a little too tired from work to ever want to throw a football with me. And I know, if he had, he would have enjoyed it a whole lot more than his day at work. But he assumed that I didn’t mind just because I didn’t tell him.
Assuming has brought the world to a wonderful place, hasn’t it? My father is a doctor, and his father before him was a lawyer. I am assumed to be as rich and successful as they are, even though it isn’t what I want to be. And outside of my own life. Every president that there will ever be will be criticized made fun of. And that is because the world now assumes that every president is an idiot, before they are even given a chance to prove themselves. The people find something they don’t like about him and they make it all he is.
And sexism? The largest product of assumption. When I wake up in the morning I don’t say. “I am a man; now watch as I fill this mold.” I wake up as, “I am me, watch me live.” I am a human who just happens to like women. I have come across too many people who think of themselves as their gender and too often do I find them filling a pre set standard. Not being able to see themselves doing certain things because they have their life set in this box of rules, using their gender as an excuse to fail.
If you are a woman, you are not a woman to me. What you are to me is an object of desire. You are the possibility that I won’t be alone. You are the future I don’t have planned. You are sexually enticing, robbing me of composure. Jumpstarting my heart with those millions of kilo watts that run through your eyes and smile. You to me, could one day be my everything. You to me, could one day be just one. A unity of souls.’
And if you are a man, you are not a man to me. What you are is a person, who might share the same outlook on life as me, and could one day be my close friend who I turn to for help. You are competition, adventure, and understanding.
The moments will decide, if you give me one.
And how did I reach these conclusions? By trying to fit the mold and failing. I wasn’t good enough at anything to be great and loved. And I wasn’t bad enough at anything to be awful and hated. I was just there, just me, just a part of someone else’s moment. Part of a moment I didn’t want to remember.
My point is that too much in life as tried to capture all of my attention and keep me worried. Too much in life has kept me only fearing what time will bring, instead of looking at my life in expectation of a new and exciting moment. I’m not going to remember my small failures. Or trivial success. Only the three or four days of every years that made me stop, and look at where I am standing. There is something that defines you, being left to play with toy soldiers in your room growing up. You learn to value your time with your soldiers, because the world is forcing you to be like your father. To be like everyone else. To miss the moments that define us.
THIS is a Conversation
The World is Graying
At what point do people stop dreaming?
At what point do people stare at the stars and are content that they will never see them. That they will never be revered, that they will be forgotten, and there existence is nearly non important.
At what point do they decide the world is too big to conquer, that control is something that they’ll never have, and that the never had it.
At what point do they decide that Africa is something to far away or fantastic to go see.
At what point is a picture enough…
At what point do people bend and compromise to the man, saying I’ll sell you my soul for an envied status quo? And at that point that you’ve agreed to live for someone elses dream because it’s easier than living and starting your own?
At what point did we decide that everyone is a winner. That the cripple is just as apt for playing football as the athlete, that the deaf person can hold a communications job? and at that point why did we decide that we can’t disappoint?
At what point did we decide that we have to accommodate for people so they may live comfortably? That I can’t say, “That’s her, the black girl!” Even if she’s the only black girl in the room and that’s how it’s easiest to pick her face out of a crowd.
At what point did we decide that crying and pain isn’t a part of growing.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” -CS Lewis
At what point did we decide that our song, our voice is not worth listening to, that singing is not worth the breath we use.
At what point do we decide that every one is right, we just see it differently…
And at that point why don’t we see that we have just eliminated good and evil.
“Why are you scared to dream of god when it’s salvation that you want?” -Bright eyes
And all we have created for ourselves is a world where everything is in a shade of gray until the pitch black of death, and the white light of judgment pick us apart.
“A good woman will pick you apart
A box full of suggestions for your possible heart
But you may be offended and you may be afraid
But don’t walk away, don’t walk away” -Bright Eyes
At what point did we decide that growing meant accepting the world we live in. Have you heard about the man who beat himself into the ground trying to change life. Could life be a world with no super heroes, no good vs evil, nothing that worth dying for or living for, just because someone else doesn’t see it that way… and we can’t say their wrong.?
“And if you swear that there’s no truth and who cares, how come you say it like you’re right?”-Bright eyes
