Dear Diary,
Past few days the film spinning in my imagination about how I, being its main character, travel from childhood to old age, tripping over various successes and failures along the way, has begun increasingly getting cut off. For a minute, for two, for five. On one hand I’m glad – no need to walk to Kleboniškis, it’s enough to go to the bathroom or lean over the kitchen sink doing dishes. On the other hand you think – so here it is, that famous “awakening”, here it is, pulling yourself out of that endless nightmarish dream. Here it is, what you’ve been searching for and trying to understand for almost two decades. And what? After all, in one of the first books read, it was written in black and white – where you plan to travel, you won’t find absolutely anything. Neither unspeakable fortunes, nor worldwide recognition, nor the most beautiful relationships in life. Just one, big, peaceful, all-encompassing Nothing.
Then you open Facebook and your inner screen is instantly filled with some federation, some dirty ministry procurements, some scandals, some well-known and unknown heads screaming over each other from both sides. One could say these are simply earthly things, but no – they’re already somewhat subterranean. And you suddenly say to yourself “Ah, yes! Perhaps better – simply nothing.”
It’s interesting to observe that however many objects surround you at the moment, in a state of peace they fill with emptiness, merge into something whole, peaceful, neutral. They acquire distinctness, separateness and value only at the moment when they’re accompanied by corresponding images on our inner screen duplicated by our inner monologue – “Here’s a phone. It’s mine. I pay installments for it. There’s a pen. It annoys me lying out of place.” To put it simply – however many objects surround us, as long as there isn’t a single thought in the head, they’re all – as if hollow. They can be touched, they can be examined, but not a single one carries any emotional charge, lacks the ability to pluck those strings in us that they pluck in the usual everyday state. Equally interesting to observe that the past surfaces from nowhere only when at this moment you’re playing through in your head the image of how small and carefree you hop along your childhood street’s sidewalk tiles. As well as the future – these are just images being spun in the mind right now about a frightening lonely tomorrow or its absence in general. So everything becomes banally simple – behind the past, the future, surrounding objects and people and the emotions they cause stands only one process – a lively and colorful lambada in our own thoughts, in our own imagination, which upon briefly stopping we find a cozy place where we can draw additional peace, additional strength, additional inspiration for the roles we perform in that lambada. Roles, which again in that dance whirlwind we choose ourselves – be it “I’m unhappy because I work hard”, “I’m unhappy because I have little” or “I’m unhappy because nobody loves me” – whatever the heart desires :-)
It’s worth noting that any of those roles switches off just as easily as every object surrounding you. So if you don’t see great meaning in it, you can confidently do just that right now.
