I'm dreamless right now.
It wasn't like this in the past, of course. I've had sweet dreams, bad dreams, crazy dreams, crushed dreams, faded dreams, fulfilled dreams, broken dreams, and torn dreams. Maybe more than I could've handled back then, but I dealt with what I had without going completely insane.
...........................and it's gone. I'm dreamless now.
I suppose I can't blame anyone but myself for it - I closed the door on it myself. 5 years of yearning (maybe more). Poof, just out the window like that. Never even knew it existed.
Except that only now I realize that nothing else existed as a replacement. Well, sure, you'd say; that's obvious, isn't it? No one comes up with replacement dreams. Hell, what's a replacement dream anyway? The next best alternative forgone in selecting the optimal choice? Was there ever an opportunity cost to dreams and dreaming? A cost to a pretty much non-monetary thing that we try, ever so hard, to monetize?
But it's empty. An empty freedom. Expected emptiness, of course - work and believe that long with the belief that you'll make it through to the light at the end of the tunnel for so long and you'd find the darkness looming all around when you finally realize that the light came from the roof; that you tricked yourself into thinking that you could just walk your way out of the damn tunnel, staring into the mirror directed upwards. The goddamn light ten stories up that you could always stare at but never reach.
I've had a supportive parent that prides himself with telling everyone that I've gotten into a respectable course at a prestigious university and immediately tells me the moment their backs are turned that he had nothing to support me with on this journey. Played around with me for two years every fucking week mindfucking me while fetching me to camp. Screaming at me for half an hour and sending an sms saying he loves me and wants me to get into the best uni I could get myself into. Then blaming me for not praying because "if I placed all this in God's hands everything would settle itself" because obviously praying by himself didn't get him far enough. Then telling me the family's financial situation after coming off for the past ten years as if he actually had money in the bank instead of wrecking his paycheck month after month after month. Then asking me of what value it was to send me to this course overseas and downplaying it one year after you boasted me off to his own fucking bosses about me. Monetizing my dream and trying his best to destroy it once it was no longer of value to him.
The part I hated the most is that I still had the choice of going. I could - I would just wreck the life savings of the saner half of the pair that made me. The one that made sense and reason. The one that made less yet would give more. And that's what the cost came down to - my dream or her future.
And so I'm dreamless. It's the worst feeling there is and I did it to myself. Of course that's not so bad. The whole thing just reeks of first-world fucking immaturity and foolishness, the goddamn elite kid whining about not getting into the stupid school he wants to get into because it's just too fucking expensive and he's complaining because he has no grasp on money. When it won't fucking matter in a few years time when he's out looking for a job, competing with those who made the assumption that going overseas would make you more attractive on the resume, that piece of paper that just sells you as a product to the world (hopefully at the best price, as far away from "competitive" as possible).
Sure they're right. It won't matter then. But fuck if the feeling I have right now is insignificant and childish and immature. That's me. I apologize for having subscribed to the ideal that somewhere out there across the ocean education exists that couldn't be described by the words "大开眼界". I apologize for feeling like a frog in a well compared to my peers in secondary school and believing that surely amongst the best universities I could once again find and learn from such people as my peers. I apologize for being a mediocre man amongst the elite. The elite mediocre. I apologize for believing that exposing myself to the best could allow me to slowly yet surely learn to be like them.
Life obviously never fucking worked that way. It's hilarious, really - the lack of direction I have now.
I remember a story a friend of mine wrote. Its title - Any Dream Will Do. You can't get "any dream" unless you abandon "your dream" - but what dream remains amongst the broken pieces that can make up the "any dream"s that you hold on to; the paper mache of broken dreams glued and sewn up like a monstrosity of its former self? The shine broken apart, the shards dulled, the mediocrity at its purest.
It's crying over spilt milk. Because there's nothing else in the wasteland once the milk seeps in.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Friday, May 04, 2012
The price of a dream
What is the price of a dream?
Is it your life? Your hopes? Your time? Your ambition? Six years as an employee of an organization you couldn't care less about; your chance at living a peaceful and quiet life completely blown apart and destroyed? Your prospects and your future cast in iron contract upon a piece of paper, the black ink darker than your soul after society sucks it out, leaving whatever hollow shell there is remaining.
Is it their lives? Their hopes? Their time? Their ambition? The car they hoped for, or that long holiday after years and years of slaving. Their very savings swept off by the wind into another country; another land. Their very life reduced to a pittance just to uphold the nobility of your dream.
The dream coexists with the life, hopes, time and ambition, some would say. It's obvious, isn't it? They work towards it. Yours do, at least. The rest get trampled down in the mud and dust, a pathetic state that couldn't even evoke any mockery from the very connoisseurs of schadenfreude.
What IS this dream, anyway? A culmination of all the hopes and ideals placed onto a single object/location/status/profession? That you must have/be/go/experience it? Do you even have the certainty that this is truly what you want? That you can go through it, say to yourself that you're truly "living the dream" as of this moment up to this moment, and when it's finally over (if it ever does) heave a sigh of relief and say "that changed my life and I will never regret this"?
It's a projection. That's the problem. That's what the dream is - an attempt to foresee yourself in the future. A prediction - or dare I even say it, a calculation - that you, the apparently predictable self that you are, under this circumstance of obtaining said dream, will act in this particular manner and end up in a certain state that could not have been obtained otherwise. This "particular manner" and "state" that you envision, are they even remotely close to the truth that will come your way in the future? Let's say it doesn't. What then? Do you say "Oh dear, I'm sorry. The thing I always worked towards obtaining happened to be useless and pointless for me. I felt nothing about, toward, and from it. It made no difference to my life. I apologize for trampling on things you held dear to you just to attain this utterly pointless thing just because I held it dear to me."
I like to feel it's an obvious answer. I almost certainly know it isn't nearly as obvious just because I haven't been in this scenario myself yet. Even if you trust circumstances to dictate themselves in a certain way, you realize it's difficult to predict how you react in such a circumstance - it's almost paradoxical to predict your future actions while espousing the virtues of free will. You could of course technically predict with absolute certainty, except that would technically be dictatorial prediction. It's pretty much foul play to predict someone's death in the next hour while hiding a knife behind your back.
Say it does. Can you be certain that this state and manner of self come as a result of attaining said dream? Can you be certain that this isn't something that could've been reproduced elsewhere? It's a depressing state to feel this, but dreams aren't unique. People share dreams. Two million people out there dream of being the president - who knows whether you'll even have a hundred who truly appreciate and feel gratitude to have such an honour. Who knows how many who wish to be a billionaire would waste their money and lives away in a mere decade? Dreams come by the dozens. They're cheap. The price to pay for them aren't.
I suppose that's the crux of it all. Attaining your dreams may be priceless, but the act of it rarely is. If yours is, be thankful - your dream is either a marvelous gem or worthless trash. Pray it is the former.
For the rest of us, the experience is not so much a noble journey to the destination of legends but a cold transaction between yourself and the tangible forces of society or the intangible forces of nature around. Your life for this. Forty grand for that. A pound of flesh for your vengeance. His blood for your undoing. And all that you can do is pray that for all it cost, it was worth it.
Is it?
Is it your life? Your hopes? Your time? Your ambition? Six years as an employee of an organization you couldn't care less about; your chance at living a peaceful and quiet life completely blown apart and destroyed? Your prospects and your future cast in iron contract upon a piece of paper, the black ink darker than your soul after society sucks it out, leaving whatever hollow shell there is remaining.
Is it their lives? Their hopes? Their time? Their ambition? The car they hoped for, or that long holiday after years and years of slaving. Their very savings swept off by the wind into another country; another land. Their very life reduced to a pittance just to uphold the nobility of your dream.
The dream coexists with the life, hopes, time and ambition, some would say. It's obvious, isn't it? They work towards it. Yours do, at least. The rest get trampled down in the mud and dust, a pathetic state that couldn't even evoke any mockery from the very connoisseurs of schadenfreude.
What IS this dream, anyway? A culmination of all the hopes and ideals placed onto a single object/location/status/profession? That you must have/be/go/experience it? Do you even have the certainty that this is truly what you want? That you can go through it, say to yourself that you're truly "living the dream" as of this moment up to this moment, and when it's finally over (if it ever does) heave a sigh of relief and say "that changed my life and I will never regret this"?
It's a projection. That's the problem. That's what the dream is - an attempt to foresee yourself in the future. A prediction - or dare I even say it, a calculation - that you, the apparently predictable self that you are, under this circumstance of obtaining said dream, will act in this particular manner and end up in a certain state that could not have been obtained otherwise. This "particular manner" and "state" that you envision, are they even remotely close to the truth that will come your way in the future? Let's say it doesn't. What then? Do you say "Oh dear, I'm sorry. The thing I always worked towards obtaining happened to be useless and pointless for me. I felt nothing about, toward, and from it. It made no difference to my life. I apologize for trampling on things you held dear to you just to attain this utterly pointless thing just because I held it dear to me."
I like to feel it's an obvious answer. I almost certainly know it isn't nearly as obvious just because I haven't been in this scenario myself yet. Even if you trust circumstances to dictate themselves in a certain way, you realize it's difficult to predict how you react in such a circumstance - it's almost paradoxical to predict your future actions while espousing the virtues of free will. You could of course technically predict with absolute certainty, except that would technically be dictatorial prediction. It's pretty much foul play to predict someone's death in the next hour while hiding a knife behind your back.
Say it does. Can you be certain that this state and manner of self come as a result of attaining said dream? Can you be certain that this isn't something that could've been reproduced elsewhere? It's a depressing state to feel this, but dreams aren't unique. People share dreams. Two million people out there dream of being the president - who knows whether you'll even have a hundred who truly appreciate and feel gratitude to have such an honour. Who knows how many who wish to be a billionaire would waste their money and lives away in a mere decade? Dreams come by the dozens. They're cheap. The price to pay for them aren't.
I suppose that's the crux of it all. Attaining your dreams may be priceless, but the act of it rarely is. If yours is, be thankful - your dream is either a marvelous gem or worthless trash. Pray it is the former.
For the rest of us, the experience is not so much a noble journey to the destination of legends but a cold transaction between yourself and the tangible forces of society or the intangible forces of nature around. Your life for this. Forty grand for that. A pound of flesh for your vengeance. His blood for your undoing. And all that you can do is pray that for all it cost, it was worth it.
Is it?
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