If my life was a movie, and there must surely be so few of us that don't - at one time or another- want to live the life of a movie character, I would have stopped watching a long time ago. Out of sheer boredom.
I say a movie character, not a movie star, becuase I think only a very few, hopefully, people aspire to become movie stars; that life of flashy emptiness. Being a great actor might be somebody's dream. But being a movie star! I can't bring myself to even imagine wanting such an existence.
That brings me back though, to the somewhat nebulous point, I can't imagine what I would want my life for, not really. I have my dreams and I have my few achievements, some of which might even be achievement enough to make more than just a mother proud. But I doubt it, and to be frank, I don't care. I don't want to feel like I need people to feel proud of me or admire me. No, as much as that might make one feel good, it is not enough, it is too ephemeral and subjective. I want something longer lasting, something that satiates my life, that great hunger, I want to admire, myself. I want avoid that feeling that might creep up on me, as I whitlle away at a plastic stick*, crouched and white haired, that feeling of sadness, failure and regret.
Failing having a completely fulfiling life, maybe I could have have something that others have attained or at least appear to have obtained... Faith. I wish I could block my snide senses whisphering and filling my head with their cynical views on this world. I wish I could forget my scientific training, and cast my interest in the material world away, like a soiled and scratchy cloak. Come, lord God, show yourself. Give me a sign.
Blind love is hard. We 'educated', 'free thinkers' might sneer and worse at those with deep conviction. We watch them walk around like moles stumbling into hard facts and, through sheer force of will, converting them into piles of fertile soil from which they cultivate further faith; and we laugh, although I think it is a nervous laugh at times. Nervous because the moles can be so destructive in their pursuit to crumble and turn all that opposes their belief, and nervous perhaps, because maybe we are missing something. Maybe we have been excluded from faith, and we don't know, we can't know, entirely if that is a good or bad thing.
Of course I am not focusing solely on religious faith here. Although in most cases it is the most extreme in all ways. Faith in technlology, faith in democracy, faith in money (capitalism as a religion anyone?)... these are some other faiths that seem at least from my limited (because life- the bitch- has trapped me within myself and I can experience only myself fully) perspective, to have arisen and in some ways supplanted much religious faith.
Why am I rambling on? Why do I feel the need to write this down and perhaps share this? I don't know. I do not intend to belie my previous statement: It is sincerley not my intent to use this in any small way as a way to gain attention, that flashy, meretricious praise from the other, from you dear reader. No, I think perhaps I write this, because I am desperate to know: What drives you?
There is a chance that what drives you may catch a hold of me, a new faith that will sweep me away with it, like it does you. Something that will make life MEANINGFUL. Something that will make MY life meaningful, something to satisfy me, or at least give me a reason for this existence.
Down with Nihilism!
*In the future it will have to be a plastic stick, because in my dystopia we will have to get a licence to use wood as there will be so few trees left.
