Life’s Bittersweet Symphony

Good evening ladies and gentleman

I hope that a sort of pattern is forming in the thoughts and feelings i portray across Thinking Evolution. I feel a lot of what we do, think and feel throughout out lives should always be flowing and evolving at all times, for to get stuck, to be settled  in a persistent routine that gives you nothing other than the same familiar feelings, but no sensations at all? Of the beauty and by contrast the misery of life, to me, isn’t really living at all. Its scary, its complex and sometimes running away seems the best option. But its life. The wonderful moments that mean more to you than breathing itself, the terrifying, brilliant, complicated, beautiful, joyous, loving envious, stupid, addictive, life. The feelings these moments create, the forever lasting impact they have on you and on your legacy as you try, in your own way- to “live forever.”

The world is always changing and in a way , so are we. That irritating question some job interviews ask- “where do you think you will be in five years?” I have always wondered how people answer this question, for to me it seems impossible to answer, because it something you should never know. The people you could meet, the experiences you could have, the places you go, the food you eat, the moments you share will have a lasting impact on you, good or bad, causing an evolution in you that will mean you never return to that way of thinking.

I have considered many forms of thoughts, choices, all accumulating to your own “Thinking Evolution” of sorts. However, the way i write and the way we execute these thoughts and feelings in modern life throughout the strangeness of modern society seems a bit of a minefield all by itself. For emotions, in their infinite unpredictability in how they effect us  and how they cause us to respond to certain situations cannot be predicted, molded or pushed into a particular direction, a direction that we hope, or maybe expect to produce this positive evolution.

Furthermore, there is another, potentially destructive result of these changes. Hope. Now, i’m not saying and i never will assume that hope is a bad thing for a lot of the time its one of the few things keeping you up and flowing through life at a level that, to you at least, gives you everything you want from life. Even though its capable of a more emotionally draining result. Hope can give you a taste of how brilliant things can be, when you believe. Belief is power, giving you the means to make you capable of so much more, of being worthy of these moments, of people you love so dam much- there are few other sensations like it.  Then as you feel it,  almost getting a sense for it, the way it feels, the way it effects you, as soon as you become happy with it being in your life, its gone. I guess in a way, this is the bittersweet symphony of life i like to think we have all experienced.

I can talk, i can shout, i can hope, i can think, write, anything about how you, I or anyone can be a part of an evolution in a particular way. I can believe that if I were to experience something so profound, to feel something so powerful it changes perspectives or the way we think and feel about life, it could make me “happier.” Even privileged to be part of that moment as i move forward with this new knowledge of the world and myself. Then through this continue living in a way that is “mine.” To ignore the emotional response to the loss of something amazing, that emotionally draining sensation,  to go from feeling so much of the brilliance and wander for all that life can be, to having so little motivation for life you can’t get out of bed in the morning for the pain you have caused yourself, through whatever happened. To ignore that? Well, that would be stupid.

You had something, it was beautiful. There is no such thing as perfect, but in that moment, during that experience, it really did feel perfect. Then, life, being life, got in the way. It went wrong, you natural planning, your expectations, beliefs of what was going to happen didn’t go that way. Life sent you down a curveball that came round and smacked you in the face. Whatever happened, your immediate jump is to what you screwed up, to try and understand what caused you to go from having what felt like such a win,  to feeling so low, to your mind being infected with such pain and anguish as the very thoughts and feelings you loved, that motivated you to carry on with life is now causing nothing but misery.

I suppose this is the point. You find yourself pushing the world away, assuming the loss of people is uninteresting, telling yourself, again, again and again “it didn’t really matter anyway,” for if something doesn’t matter, it can’t really hurt. Even as you push the world away, its impossible to ignore how much it once made you feel, for it remains so beautiful, yet so tear jerking too. The bittersweet experiences that are capable of making us feel so much, in both a positive and negative way are by far the hardest to live with, to me. Its difficult, because all that remains is a memory. 2 memories, strictly speaking, forever battling against each other, battling for dominance, for power over your thinking evolution and the direction it will go in.

You have the beauty of the memory, and the misery of what happened once the moment had passed as it faded and things turned to dust. Something changed in you, something changed in the world that meant you couldn’t find that feeling again, like someone had switched off the lights and you had dropped your glasses on the floor, leaving you flailing around on the ground endlessly pressing and grabbing at what seemed like just air in the expanse of black, dense, blurry darkness.

As i said before, hope is incredibly powerful, in both a positive and negative way, something that to me, as the days pass, can become more and more profound in the emotional response it creates. To me, this is more than “bad,” this is more than feeling sad, feeling miserable or alone. This bittersweet sensation is confusing, because the way you think, they way you feel, is always changing.  The best way i can think to explain the effect of the “bittersweet symphony” is through the idea of being alone.

You are on your own. You’re not really that bothered by it, busy living, grinding, achieving,  believing in yourself and the desires that drive you through life, experiencing beautiful moments and being proud to just be a part of life. By all intensive purposes, you are alone and that’s OK, your working on you.

However, you meet someone, and they make you feel so much more than you ever thought possible. I’ve been trying to understand what this feeling is for years with no luck, only really seeing it as hope being “victorious.” Then, as quickly as you felt so much, its gone. That person who was there and meant more to you than you believed any one person could, ends up nothing more than a painfully beautiful memory. You were once alone and now, you are lonely.

This effect on your thinking that these emotional experiences give you is, to me, the powerful effect of life’s bittersweet symphony.

Yours, typically confused but with love as always.

DR

Random picture.

 

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