Where Dreams Sometimes Lead (not Yours)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One morning, while sipping a fragrant Americano with a pinch of cinnamon on your balcony overlooking the ocean, you suddenly realize that the present around you is not yours. You have been drinking coffee with cinnamon since the moment of a sad parting with your first love - because that is how she loved it, breaking your still fragile heart, unprepared for the often cruel reality. You never learned to enjoy the early climbs, but a status position in a huge corporation does not allow you otherwise. The ocean, in spite of the enthusiastic sighs of friends, has not made you happy since childhood, but the mountains, which your ex-wife have always hated for a long time, stubbornly inspired you

And now you have fulfilled the dreams of everyone: parents, classmates, past and present. Traveled half of the world, bought cars, apartments, colleagues give you cool cufflinks. You got everything they wanted so much, from which you formed your "want". You are the king of the mountain in the eyes of many. But why at times is it so melancholy and scary in the depths of the silent corridors? What is it about this depth?

Once upon a time, your dream was to dance an emotional contempo to difficult music: so that with anguish, so that it would give you goosebumps. But dad said that normal guys in tights do not walk and do not jerk their legs, but earn money, even if conditional sweat, suffering and not necessarily joyfully.

Then you got into guitar. Fingering thin strings somehow pacified, helped to concentrate, pushed unnecessary details of the day into the background. Not Eric Clapton, of course, but pretty good, they said that you have your own style and that you are "promising." But my mother insisted that you get a "normal" law degree, and even in the evenings she allowed you to do stupid things.

At the right studies, you hung out only with the right ones, because prestige, opportunities and all that. They taught you the subtleties of recognizing the same people you need and how to get what you want. By making friends with the "right" teachers and by sitting down less friendly colleagues, you've secured your way in an academic direction.

Then you went higher and more successfully, conquering more and more horizons, less and less colluding with your conscience, because that was demanded by the cherished success. You wake up and go to work, drinking the hated cinnamon coffee on the way. You go to meetings, you solve problems, you say the right words to your subordinates and you persistently inspire them. But this world is not yours.

You proved to everyone, from parents tortured by everyday life to laughing rich classmates, that you are worth something. But everything that you have achieved no longer causes awe, or even joy. Left alone with your honesty, you understand that inside there are no more motives, no aspirations, no meaningful goals.

There is only emptiness left. Thick and dense, viscous like a quagmire. You would like to change everything, but you don't know where to start. You don't even know what conditional coffee (music, cuisine, clothes) you really like. Don't let that scare you. You won't know until you try something new. So get started. Go on a new blind date, have an espresso with cardamom and pepper. Make furniture if you like it.