Based on the facts, today was a great day. I woke up late, got to work on time, got taken out for a $20 meal, wasn’t bothered by anyone, left when I had completed my seven hours, had an appointment cancelled, thereby freeing up an hour of my time, and sat down to write.
In my brain, however, I wanted to scream, turn up my desk, and walk out the door. Where did this feeling come from? This incredible dissatisfaction that stirred within me, why was it there? Especially when everyone else can simply go through their lives and feel happy?
I told my father my qualms and asked him the same question. He said, “Because you have other interests,” and proceeded to tell me that I should save up for the next year at my well-paying job and ask for full-time work in order to live abroad. But what if, as I read once in a mysticism store, I treated my father as if he were dead? Then what would I do?
I wonder if something is wrong with me, if I can’t simply turn my thought radio to the happiness dial, if I don’t meditate enough. Was I happier in the past? Am I fated to always have this horror of complacence?
I came across a document today as I was cleaning out my Google Drive, entitled, “internet journal.” I opened it up, trying to find an answer, to diagnose my past self, and found this:
30/7/12
There is something we need to feel happy and that is freedom. We need to feel that we have a place, and respect, that if we are working on something hard, we get what we deserve. We are made to feel like we earn our keep, and as Bob Dylan says, you gotta serve somebody. But if you gotta, you gotta feel good about doing it.
That’s orange and green. The blues and reds are more along the lines of comforts and friends. When it comes to those, you gotta feel like you’re living the way you want. What makes you happy? Can you get it? What makes you sad? Can you avoid it? And if you can answer yes to those “Can” questions, then you’re doing pretty well. And if you know the answers to those odd questions then you’re doing even better. Because then you probably will have friends, or at least love.
Thing about love is, it’s often treated too little like freedom. True love is true freedom, we all know that. Give and you get, that bag. But when we shackle what we love it weakens it and makes it harder to pin down. It’s like how do you get an elephant to come? You don’t grab it by the trunk. You tickle the little hairs on the top of its head. Coax it.
Like a beautiful woman. Women like seduction, which is what you do to the elephant, pretty much. And when you seduce you are ready to drop it at any second– because you’re entirely free and you don’t get weighed down to no action.
You are hands off on keeping things. You know ephemera. Zeno’s paradoxes, Heraclitus’ river. You’ve seen some Vishnu the Destroyer shit in the eyes of a beggar woman and beheld her whole life from the extinction of the dinosaurs in the glint of an eye. So you know when to hold on and when to let go. And letting go is what it really means to be free. Whether that’s your words, or your actions, or your faith. Because if it comes back to you it’s that much stronger.
So I guess I have some questions to answer. Thank you, younger Daniel.
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