We were all spoiled by the shield of education. We never felt the necessity of introspection because the guise of school inferred potential, as limitless as our drive. The longer we had left in our formative years, the more we could lie to ourselves that life was right. Dreams were capturable possibilities, free of the despotic reins of reality. And as time quickly slipped through our hands we slowly tempered our dreams to better reconcile with mediocrity. Society screamed into our ears and told us exactly how to live and be happy.
Learn, read, test, graduate, interview, work, save, marry, kids, retire, die.
With weekends thrown in and a vacation here or there enough to silence our curiousity, because we think that this is the only way it could be. Yet we stayed optimistic that our integrity wouldn't fold quite so easily. And we graduated, and entered the brutish reality of work and society. Luckily for some, it came easy. The people, the pay, the possibilities. The glamor of independence, the enticement and prestige of success. It provided a false sense of reprieve, a temporary fetish with which to ventilate our souls.
And as the money poured in, the more and more disillusioned we became with ourselves. The more and more that immediacy became our top priority. Suffocating with exuberance, we danced the years and night into a blitzkrieg of jettisoned anguish. And in desperation, we fall, lost in a sea of thieves of soul, drifting further and further away into never turning back. This was our insurrection.
Want, strive, get, elate, repeat, repeat, repeat, sickness, boredom, empty.
Finally, we realize.
And all we can remember are those dreams that used to sing us to sleep oh so gently.
I imagine it like this, on a drizzly Autumn day hidden away in the quiet countryside of France, where people are completely unpretentious, sitting in a cozy outdoor cafe under a clear awning as streams of water trickle down from above, puffing on a cigarette and sipping tea with nothing whatsoever on my mind. She is at my side, I look at her and am amazed, her gentle face is even more beautiful in the rain.