Things Unspoken

Sometimes I feel a bit sad, like I’m the only one who has realised all this is pointless, that there is no distinct inherent meaning or value to living a respectable life, it’s all just personal desire primarily led by our understanding of what a society is, what a citizen, lover, family member, friend, employee, audience member, is and ought to be, how we want to be seen affects more of us than who we just are or who we would be if we weren’t so inclined towards others. Hermits are probably just people who realised this, that, there’s no greater meaning to be found for an isolated wanderer, a vagabond, than a company chairman, nurse or business owner. You know? It’s this thing of, I know people look at me and think I’m lazy and spoilt, given everything, gifted by providence in a manner some consider so extraordinary that it is somehow unfair, I am above average in practically every way, from the inherent things like height, size, intelligence, race, gender, skills and capability, on and on to acquired things, things I’ve refined like a sense of nobility, respectability, I have the social standing, position, skills, all of it, to be anything I want to be, I said to Nicholas once, that the only reason people like us aren’t rich is because we aren’t trying to be, and I meant it.

This is the only real instance in which I begin to feel isolated from others, because I don’t want to tell them any of this, I don’t want them to know, because I find it daunting and I worry others would find it simply crushing, torturous, I love stories in which there is an absolute purpose for the protagonist, it’s easy to admire someone with a purpose, admittedly all purposes are fleeting, but I’d take that, internally, mentally, because when all distractions and machinations settle and it’s just the quiet world inside myself, I begin to think that when I die, which I will, I will retain nothing of that social standing, my intelligence, my self-importance, my emotions, it’ll all just disappear as I do, so who in their right mind would bother with this world? Why try to be a respected social member, who is well liked and satisfied with my many possessions, my salary, my job, all of it, I will retain none of it, and most of it, almost all of it, requires me to do or be something I don’t particularly want to to have it.

It’s kind of hard to put into words but I’ll try, I was walking down the street today to the restaurant to pick up dinner, I decided to take the slightly longer route because it has less cars, more trees and is mostly open on the western side meaning the sun can be viewed, as I walked I moved my arms through the cool air, in the beautiful autumn sunlight looking up at the trees, London Planes mostly with their large 5 pointed flowers, slowly changing colour, and I thought, for everything Terence ever did, every expectation he ever met, every accomplishment, all of it, he will never know the sensation, the pleasure of this wind that brushes my arm, the way I was, it’s a world not just unreachable but unknown, such is the extraordinary deprivation that comes with death.

I wondered, feeling happy, knowing and being in this beautiful scene, if I could ever do something.

I don’t know if anyone reads this diary, I don’t think so, but if you do, and you disagree with me, please, tell me, explain your opinion to me, I want nothing more than to be wrong.

I look at a man, in a job he hates, married to a wife where the passionate love has faded and what’s left now at best is a sense of familial love, love of comfort really more than anything, the exceedingly high burden of change the main reason he doesn’t just get up and leave the family, just leave the obligations that are slowly dragging him down. Yet, here he is, a successful business man, living in a nice suburb with a family and his own house, a position, a role, all of it, and, then I think, that I find more beauty, more happiness, in the simple brushing of air against my arms as I walk along, than he does in anything he does.

And that makes me sad.