THE BURDEN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Imagine you entered a magical store in which you can buy all the things you cannot buy anywhere in the world, all you ever wanted for such a long time, just lying there, waiting for you to take it. You look around and notice small bags arranged on the shelves, all the same size and color, but only titled differently. You glance over the shelves, and although everything seems strange and unfamiliar, you notice an acquainted, embroidered handwriting on those bags. The ingredients contained within them are already well known to you: love, friendship, creativity, peace, courage, confidence, money, immortality, wisdom and a handful of others. The only trick is you got to choose one and you got to choose fast. So, you stand there, over thinking all the stuff you ever wanted and needed but were somehow always out of your reach. And you think and think and while you are about to make the choice, time runs out and the store disappears.

(Un) luckily for us there are no such stores, however choice you were asked to make has more connection to reality than to magic. There is so much noise and restlessness, so many desires, decisions, so many conditions - who we should be, what we should do, what we should possess, what we should fight for, so many expectations based on movies, books, the experiences of others and their stories.

Maybe it is inevitable to get lost, to lose time, to miss an important opportunity, to not say what we wanted or to say too much. Maybe everything we didn’t do or say, all the moments we regretted, have led us to a path, a decision, a choice that, despite everything we weren’t back then, is now the right one for us. From my experience—and I am no expert, just someone trying to learn from my mistakes and truly become who I was meant to be—it seems that, over time, if we recognize it and strive for it, we gradually become exactly what we lacked during all those years of growing up. In other words, we become what we once let slip away, what we forgot, but now long to reclaim. Below are a few of my conclusions that might help someone.

        WHOSE RACE ARE YOU RUNNING IN?

Do you remember when you were a child and you were genuinely interested to explore your surroundings, trees, people, why is your friend crying and does he maybe want to play with you. It was long time ago but sometimes feels like we were never those free creatures as we never got to know how privileged that moment was. We have been told we should be running towards something, perhaps career, marriage, children, money, whatever that it is and it gets so tiring to gallop all the time, not even asking yourself if that is the right direction, if those are really people you want to surround yourself with. How devastating it may be to wake up one day and realize all the step you made and all the mountains you climbed were for someone else and you no longer remember who was that person. Before you start the run make sure it is the one you want to race in and you are doing it for yourself.    

OTHERS DO NOT MATTER

Not to get me wrong, other people do matter but not in this race, this race is you against you. I often think of myself as I was one person as a child, other at school, then High School, another at University and now I am getting more who I was before all the drama of others happened to me. I like to believe that I am a person who deeply connects with others, especially when I sense injustice or the pain of the vulnerable, however such a connection can sometimes pull us in so deeply that we no longer hear our own voice or recognize our own needs. We get so involved what others think of us, how they perceive us, do they like us or not, why do they not but at the end of the day they genuinely do not think of you and that is the truth we often forget. When we go to bed and torment ourselves with questions—why we said what we did, why we acted a certain way, why we didn’t say or do something—let us remember that we are our own harshest judge. At the end of the day, this is the only body and the only soul we have in this life—you, your conscience, your dreams, your actions, and your relationship with the Creator of all.

TIME WILL EVENTUALLY RUN OUT ANYWAY

Child does not accept death as he/she is too alive to be concerned with such a paralyzing thought. For so long, I believed my grandma will be with me forever, I believed as an adult she is immortal and we all know how such stories have to end. However, the fact that time will run out eventually does not mean we are sentenced to meaningless. Why do anything as it will not matter? We do not know why do we do some things, why writer write, painters paint, scientists experiment, teachers teach, and so on…we just know we need to, otherwise it seems our souls becomes our bodies and die together. Otherwise, I may die with my dreams and hopes and I would rather leave this life as an empty shell and the most terrifying is unlived life.

YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER

Why did the magical store disappear before we had the chance to choose? Because the one who entered didn’t know exactly what they were looking for, yet they had to choose just one thing. So simple, yet so difficult. This doesn’t mean we can’t have other things as well. We probably will, but more often than not, we must first set our priorities—and that is not easy.

Today, the idea of lost and unstable identities is being popularized—those who experiment, try to walk all paths, and be so many different people, but at the end of the day, we simply must know what we cannot and do not want to compromise on. That one thing is our goal—the thing we cannot and do not want to compromise, the thing we know we must accomplish before time runs out.

And finally, going back to the beginning—I believe I would choose peace from the magical store, as it constantly escapes me. Fortunately, I am finding more and more ways (magical or not, if art is magic then magical) to hold onto it.

Now, after this brief moment of reflection together, do you know what you would choose from the magical store?