We dream of escapes. We dream of travelling to places that look nothing like what we’re used to. We dream of changing it all even for a few hours or only days.
We convince ourselves from infants that we can do anything; that we can dream big and achieve it all. But growing up we place so many constraints on ourselves. We keep waiting for the right time, the right place, the right circumstance, the right company, and we keep delaying the happiness of realising our imagined lives.
How different would everything be if we often acted on a whim, hoping for the best, instead of calculating everything that could go wrong?
How much lighter would our minds be if we cancelled all the thoughts and just ‘went for it’ once in a while?
How better could life be if instead of simply dreaming, we could live every moment, too?
“Life is not like a fairy tale; if you lose your shoe at midnight you’re drunk!”
“Oh come on, you’re exaggerating”, she confuted. “Sometimes, we do meet a Prince Charming. Life can surprise us pleasantly”.
“Sure, but how often does that really happen?” Her pessimism was disarming.
The teenage girl grinned and lowered her gaze.
“We need to believe that wonderful things can happen. You’re never too old to dream”.
“Hm, but like Eugene O’ Neill once said, ‘obsessed by a fairytale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a last kingdom of peace’”.
“What’s wrong with that?” she questioned as she turned on the Disney channel. “We become intelligent through the stories we read because we cultivate our imagination, we learn to dream, and we are convinced that dragons can be beaten. Isn’t that the point, after all? To believe that we are as strong and confident as we set our mind to entrust? And that nothing is as impossible as we think? If we don’t try, we’ll never know”.
She left her interlocutor speechless. So much, that all she could do was get the popcorn and share the couch as the movie began.
He was haunted by his dreams at night. Or anytime he fell asleep really. He couldn’t find comfort in allowing himself to drift off. It scared him. Because of the visions that would appear. They weren’t just disturbing nightmares like he thought at first. They were truths, prophecies waiting to be fulfilled. And he was often helpless at preventing them because they occurred somewhere he knew nothing of, to people he could not even recognise. But the news always proved his dreams were more than that. And he was powerless against them.
When he met her, he was terrified.
He fell in love with her from the minute she laid eyes on him, and she smiled so brightly, probably because she realised that.
He kept falling deeper in love with her in every passing day. He wanting to give her the world, simply because she never asked for it. She was there, like a silent support pillar, despite knowing nothing of his torment.
But somehow, in her arms he could fall asleep; drift into a dreamless REM, and wake up without anguish, fear, abhor at what may occur during the day. She was his remedy, without knowing it; she was essential to him.
The day she was departing for a trip, he knew something was wrong. He could feel it pulsing in every minute pore of his body. There was something not right. He didn’t want to let her go. But she hugged him tightly, kissed him gently, and reassured him that everything was going to be fine. She had that positive vibe constantly glowing in her aura, and it made her sweeter, even more charming, and so difficult to resist. He wanted to believe her, even though his instinct reacted otherwise.
When she closed the door to the cab at the airport, he could feel his entire world shatter to pieces.
“You know that nothing can kill you more than your own thoughts, right?” He looked at her sharply. Once again she was drowning herself, choking up on makeshift scenarios. He needed to be harsh to snap her out of it.
“We make up disasters in our heads, because we build too much expectation and then become devastated when it’s not fulfilled. Just let things be”.
“My grandma once said: The key to happiness is letting each situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be”.
“So live the moments; it’s what composes life and it’s what you will remember”.
They say happiness doubles when shared. But what about sadness? Does that halve in magnitude? Because we tend to keep our misery bottled up, especially when we consider that everyone has problems of their own, many of which are more serious than ours.
What if when we return to reality, they seem like a dream? What if all we have to account for them are the photos we took but never uploaded anywhere? What if the only documented evidence of our fun was how it made us feel? How long will it last? And how will we make it endure for longer?
Why is it that whenever something good arrives, we have an innate fear that it will overturn, and that something bad will come to upset it all? Why do we allow ourselves to fall into that spiralling circle that messes up our minds? What if we just send out the optimism and positiveness we hope to receive; would that make fortune return to us?
Life is what it is. But that’s not always easy to accept. No matter what anyone tells us to do.
How do you switch it off? Your mind. How do you hinder the perplexities? How do you stop it from making scenarios, rushing to conclusions, dreaming ahead? How do you escape your own thoughts?
How is it that your entire mood can change by a single potential drawn up in your head? By that question or theory that wakes you up at night and haunts your sleep? How is it that what we fear most or anguish about is usually simply something concocted by our brain and not reality?
We fabricate our dreams, yet we cannot stop ourselves from cursing our own good fortune. And for that, we bring ourselves harm because we expect things to go wrong. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we overthink everything and then anticipate it all to take the wrong turn.
But what if we silenced that part of our brain that cautions us so much it does not allow us to live; to enjoy even the simplest things of life?
What if we took the risk of tumbling upside down inside a sheet hanging off the ceiling, like we do in aerial yoga? What if we enabled ourselves to do something different – something out of the box and beyond our comfort zone? What if we enjoyed it so much that we could finally begin to acknowledge that life eventually gains the vivacity you send out to it?
It all begins inside that powerful organ – the brain. Don’t let it bring self-destruction for no apparent cause.
There are some things you just know; it’s that gut feeling that is almost never wrong. Some call it instinct, intuition, fate, destiny; name it as you wish, but that energy you receive from within actually helps direct your decisions, even unconsciously.
He felt it as soon as he shook her hand and she smiled brightly at him, her eyes sparkling like stars in the darkness of the room.
The music around them was loud, but they heard nothing. For that moment, it was just them. That’s how you block out the world. When you reach a true connection with someone.
It’s inexplicable how and why. How we meet these people during the ‘right’ time in our lives; how we never met them before even if we hang in the same circles and with the same people; and why we come across them when we’re ready to truly unite on all levels.
Be it a best friend who becomes your support, your shoulder to cry on, your harshest critic, but above all your family; or be it your soulmate (if there ever is one), the one who completes you, who makes your heart flutter, and who gets you smiling broadly at the single thought of them; people with whom we connect so deeply are invaluable. Because they become the light in our darkest hours, the people who lift us up when we’re crawling, who make us see our worth when we refuse to do so, who help us achieve our targets, who assist us on our path towards becoming the product of our dreams.
We need people like these in our life, however rare they may be. Because, ultimately, they are the ones who make us the better versions of ourselves. And that matters more than anything. For that is when we are at our most productive, most healthy, and most happy state of mind.
So, what are your hopes and wishes for the New Year? Other than health, happiness, success, wealth, love, peace and serenity. How would you like to remember the year? Or more importantly, how would you like to be remembered?
After a year that was full of clouds, let the new one be brighter. Let’s make use of the lessons learnt, spend more time with family and friends, spread love whenever possible, and don’t fret so much over the things we can’t control.
Let’s enjoy ourselves more and realise that it’s not the things, but the moments that make life grand.
MC's Whispers 