We are curious creatures, human nature creating a plethora of contradiction in action. These contradictions seem embedded in the battle between our idealised self and the actual way we react and continue our broken, decrepit patterns of failure.
In this statement of confusion, brought about by the process of the solo colonialist, I hope to outline the Idealism versus the actuality of our actions. Case in Point:
Any given westerner, in family or alone travels to create a reality, a justification of existence, through pleasant experience and growth, mental or spiritual. Along this path we find a place that feels more like home than anywhere and causes one to drop anchor. To transition oneself from a life of endured necessity based on the hope of one day having the life we idealise. Yet we bring an unseen baggage with us, a putrid toxic, conditioned mind that sets stumbling blocks plentiful in paradise’s gardens. I will introduce a new phrase that jumped into my brain during in introspective moment, this “consumer guilt” not dissimilar to catholic guilt in its deep rooted subconscious, cancerous, negative, systemic nature seems a root source of losing ones self when already found. Or so you thought.
And so it begins, making hell of paradise.
“How can I stay in this place I love, survive in the way my travelling has accustomed me?”
I will bring with me the woes of my past life, the process of business, social interaction, networking . I will build and create and aspire, advertise and become immersed in commerce because less is no longer more when you fall back to the rut you ploughed and briefly climbed from just long enough to see how life could be.
So, from the ideal of a simple life in beauty- and in unison with like minded peers, slowly but surely we recreate the life we left behind in the place we chose to hide from it. What could possibly inspire the free mind to propagate such catastrophe? The answer? Fear. Fear is a powerful enemy, an enemy with many ploys and tact’s to recruit your cognitive processes and employ them only in undermining your quest for paradise, the paradise in your mind not the view from your window.
Evidence of this? The Kuta, Sanur and now to canggu, triangle. Slowly filling up with the confused, the bin of dreamers, refuse of hope, vortex of beauty. Stand in a bank or a traffic jam and observe the confusion and lack of calm in the eyes of the ones that came for freedom and created their Jail. But this is not to be confused with those who create their life from their passion. those who dear are clearly visible and inspire us to dream of that life. They are here and they know who they are.
It’s hard to admit failure though. It’s a long way back for some, to the wrong decision that crept slowly in, fuelled by greed, steadied by fear and executed by its conscious justification. Are they lost or do they live in the same hope that in maybe just a few more years,” I can leave this place and relax my life and I won’t want for anything, I can be happy, truly happy”. Lost, is the answer.
For me, with this dilemma clearly in my mind, I can hope only to steer round the potholes and not get stuck in with the traffic on a road leading to a place I definitely do not wish to reside. Some may say I have coasted for so long, and it’s true I feared chasing down my flawed dreams once more due to the repercussions from the first time I charged down this bright but narrow alley, blinded by the lights and the glory I lost sight of myself and found my mind in a dangerous and callous state. I sat on the sidelines, an observer of society, living off its convenience and contributing nothing but currency to its engine or mass.
I feel like we are so far from the way things could be, a world where everyone only does what they love and never under any circumstances compromises this ideal. A society like this, driven by passion and excitement, bereft of resent and conciliation would leave humanity caked in happiness, surely. The question is, are we here in this life for happiness and contentment or just experience, Our mistakes as important as our successes to our spiritual growth. If so, then this world, with so many opportunities for both, is a playground, a university of development. Let’s hope that the pursuit does not leave us in furrows so deep that we will never see the beauty from the hilltop.
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I aspire, Like Socrates, to become indifferent to the spoils of consumerism. Through this channel only, it seems that happiness may be sort as consumerism in its nature is constantly replacing and updating the wants of the masses. Anyone experienced in the woes of unrequited love understands fully the lack of happiness in continual want.
So contentment is what I aspire to, happiness my goal and I will begin each process with this in mind and avoid the temptations and justifications of habit that lead to the very unhappy destroying the beautiful, outside and within.
But First I need to buy some lenses….. Old ones though. How nice to want what’s already existed for so long but be indifferent to anything other than its function in perpetuating splendour ;-)
