Is it ever possible to bring to life a wet firecracker?
Can damp and destroyed fireworks ever be ignited to perform with that explosive beauty?
Life took me to many places. One thing I told myself many years ago was “always forward, never backwards”. Maybe that’s why I made the decision I did, remaining in the same existence instead of the new opportunity in the past. Or maybe it is really true what I started believing a while back that none of my biggest decisions were ever up to me. Simply a soaked firecracker floating down the river. Lost and distorted but with a sense of direction: forwards, never backwards, wherever the water wishes it.
It was likely a mistake, and I wake up with a sort of repeated despondency of myself. Lately, many things feel like mistakes. Or maybe not mistakes as much as future regrets. Coping with the wetness of fireworks, the river taking me downstream regardless, I’ve returned to some old bad habits. It feels good knowing they are bad for me. Maybe it is some self-punishment towards my own inability to go wild, again. Rebelling into a sense of a lost part of me that I still remember to identify as genuine. Life is twisted that way: Backwards.
Floating down the river, I feel like I keep pushing for nothing tangible. Shrinking ever so slightly so that I’ve not quite noticed. I often claim I have claustrophobia; uncomfortable in tight places, near walls without windows, actively avoiding picking the window seat in an aeroplane, and humid warm spaces where the air is too hard to breathe panic me. I don’t think it’s claustrophobia, I think it’s my take on the fight or flight instinct. I need a free lane to escape. A highway for running away: Forwards. Away. Sometimes simply forward by not moving backwards.
Once, I tried living by the motto of the path of least resistance. I printed it in some fashionable format and put it next to other motivational “get through the day” posters in my office. Stupid really, if that’s what I’ve been doing all along anyway. Existing in the dao without the perks of the liberation from struggle.
Struggling to set ablaze soaked in the water.