Life-made
“How have I become what I am?” is a question I have repeated to myself many times and I never reached a definite answer. So far, the hands of luck have drawn my life map, the fire of suffering has traced the steps of my journey, and the passing time has been burning me to shed some light on my path and the path of the ones close to me.
I suffer from an ever-present nostalgia, I am a pessimist and I despise most human beings. Three things have had the biggest impact on how I have evolved to what I am today: longing, disappointment and ego!
I have nostalgia of a past that didn’t quite happen and the illusion of a future that will never happen. I am forever torn away from my desired existence and uprooted from my true emotions.
I have dark thoughts about everything. Some people say that pessimism is a form of cowardliness. Maybe they are right, but it doesn’t really matter! There are so many good reasons for being a pessimist. I once was an optimist, but then I had a close and critical look at life, and that allowed me a glimpse of the truth, after that, my optimism gave way to my current state! My pessimism has formed primarily as a consequence of a feeling that has accompanied me all my life, in many circumstances, with many people and even with uncontrollable forces such as luck and coincidence. That feeling is simply disappointment. When dealing with people, I have never felt anything more often and more consistently than disappointment. It shaped my thinking and the way I define and develop my relations with other people. My biggest fear with the ones close to my heart has always been that I disappoint them or they disappoint me. Because when it happens there will be no cure and no going back to that magic circle of “the people who will never disappoint me or whom I will never disappoint”. I wrote an article on “expectations” in a hopeful attempt to prevent any future disappointments with the people I care about. This article turned out to be the biggest source of disappointment for me, as no one I was wishing would read it, actually read it. Expectations and disappointment struck again, and pessimism grew stronger!
I despise the vast majority of human beings and their belongings. Very few people or things have any importance in my eyes, and I am deeply convinced that it cannot be otherwise! This doesn’t mean that I haven’t tried. I did try, very hard and then I reached hopelessly the sad conclusion that very few individuals are worth the trouble. After many years, during which I have come across and befriended many people of different backgrounds and ages, I realised that the more I know humanity, the more contempt I feel about all its members. That feeling is arguably the ugliest part of becoming older and discovering more of life. Pascal Bruckner, a French writer and philosopher, said it beautifully: “the worst in old age is not the physical degradation but the disgust from humanity”. The reason behind my contempt is undoubtedly the human ego. Because when it is all said and done, for the largest number of people, there remains one key thing shaping their attitude and behaviour: their ego! This latter doesn’t have to be big or oversized, though it often is, but it needs to always be at the center of every interaction and fed with all the attributes its owners believe are true about themselves. Over time, with these people, things become a bit less honest, a bit less truthful, a bit less genuine, and a bit less enjoyable. I become with them a bit more careful, a bit more accommodating, a bit more artificial, and a bit more bored. I finally end up despising them.
Of course I have known also one or two, maybe three individuals, who don't give a damn about their ego, while being smart, generous, emotionally rich, and deep in their feelings. With these people I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy every bit of life I spend with them.
It is extremely pretentious to write about yourself and expect that people want to read it. I am here taking the risk to write few lines that will require a handful of minutes to read. One cannot intelligently hope for more time and attention. In spite of this obvious fact, many men and women fill an incalculable number of pages about their lives. Is there really a need for thousands or even hundreds of pages to describe few hours that were worth living and years of emptiness? Evidently, human ego and vanity have no limits and are not disturbed neither tempered by their own emptiness; actually it is quite the opposite!
My life story, if I ever write it, will have one page on me and the remaining pages will be a salute and a reverence to all the people who loved me and whom I loved, to all who contributed to my life, in its small joys and immense sufferings, and to all who are convinced of their importance in my own realization. The story of my life will be the story of all those who fabricated it and filled it with all the things it needed or not! Very rare were the moments I created and fully enjoyed or hated. These rare moments were the incarnation of extreme beauty and scary ugliness. They were the strongest and most violent moments of my life. Because these moments are my creation, because they belong to me, because they are my joys, my sufferings, my love, my hate, my sadness and my pleasures, because they are from me and to me, because they are all this, I will write on them one single page whose content will remain inaccessible to those who read it. One page that no one will be able to understand its meaning or to live the moments it describes. One page, lost among millions of pages!
Before I close this small egocentric chapter, let us all remember that even He, who carried the optimism, love, and hope of humanity in his heart, with his words and his acts, ended up deciding that the only viable option was to die. He was disappointed by his closest companions and betrayed by the ego of the closest of them all, Judas. While dying on the cross, in a last act of optimism, love and hope for his fellow humans, He uttered the famous and historical words of disappointment, arguably the biggest disappointment of all time: “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?”
Pessimistic and despiteful from many disappointments and an excess of human egocentricity, I am life-made! There is no solution and there is only one escape!