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Good Night Face by The Window

Arbitrary title, if you please. It's just one of those nights where I'm home early, I could've done something better, but I just slip into this state of lazyness, probably because I've been out late lately. I'm just chilling by for a couple of hours, at present, with the biggest decision of the moment being whether I should eat or tuck in early tonight. I'm pretty much stuck on one assignment question and until I could get that done, I don't have a morale boost enough to declare myself productive and move on to the next one. It's okay, I'll take the chill pill for tonight.



I used to be methodical when I write, like I'd have a rough idea of what I wanted to say and I'd have  a purpose. Then, I'd let myself write, going with the flow and it kind of turns out somewhat coherent. Nowadays it's pretty hard to just simply blog and end up with a piece that I can give myself a pat on the back for at the end of the day. I wonder why am I not as eloquent as before, and why it's even harder for me to articulate my feelings. Perhaps previously because I was naive, I'd only cared about expressing, I couldn't care much about consequences, I was in a bubble, so I wrote from my heart and my only purpose was to please myself by "getting it out there". The manifestations of my brain child that has been swimming around in the flux of my thoughts all this while.

Of course, I also had more time back then. Nowadays, I'd contemplate on something but not have the time to follow through, I'd shove it to the back of my head, hoping to revisit, but I don't pick up the pieces where I've left off as smoothly as maybe the gap in  between was too long that I'd forgotten about it. There was a discontinuity in the train of thought. Heck, finishing one blogpost without being distracted is pretty hard.

Anyway, it makes it easier that I come up with a general keyword to ensure I stay on task. So, lately, I'd say I'd group my collection of thoughts under the keyword of circumstance.

Sometimes I wonder if the supposedly meaningful ties we have with people are merely products of circumstance.

Exhibit A : stranded on an island. You and another person. You don't get to choose who it is. If you could, it would've been another person, but it just so happens it's not your type of person, but due to circumstances in which you have no choice but to rely on each other and you can't walk out on each other either because there's not other people you can turn to and your survival rate would hypothetically decrease if you guys are apart. So, over time because you spent countless years with each other, with no sign of an end, and you've seen each other through thick and thin, you settle for "well, I guess I have to live with this". and over time it becomes "it ain't so bad." When suddenly, a sign of salvation arrives, you think to yourself "yay! I'll be saved! I'll go back to a world where I can choose the people I can feel safe with." but because of all the time that passed between you and that person you're stuck with, alluva sudden, that person has an elevated status in your life. Like, you can't just go "okay, adventure's over, you go back to your life, I go back to mine, I may or may not be thankful to you, but I'm more interested to getting back to my old life pronto before any of this happen." Normally, things don't turn out that way. you kind of feel "indebted" to that person. either because he saved your life or helped to keep you alive or for all the time in between.

then you start thinking to yourself, in this span of time, I've spent more time with this alien, who generally did not exist in my life prior to this, as compared to all those people I've known and spent my time with all my life. Then you start to wonder, did I really alienate myself all these years ? Can I ever really pick up things where I left off ? Did that lost time take a toll on my "status quo" relationships ? did it make me too different in shared memories with them ?

what about this person I have lived with while stranded on the island with no one else ? I no way intended that I wanted to be close to this person. I only felt this way because he was the only other human being around. Had circumstances been different, I wouldn't have to be in gratitude towards him. Now the situation is such that the favourable circumstances where I can have "my people" back is restored, would that have rendered the relationship due to the previous circumstance void ? but what if I am now genuinely attached to him ? that somehow due to my indebtedness to him due to the favors he did to me and the favors I do for him and all the shared memories together, he will now be incorporated into my life, or that I have more in common with him now than my "status quo" relationships a priori ? what if from the beginning I made it clear to him that this relationship was "provisional", only for the benefits of the cooperation for the present moment, and until the time has passed, we do our best to help each other out, but as soon as it's over, due to our different preferences, although we feel indebted to each other, we are not obliged to constantly keep in touch or regard each other as intimate friends or as default confidantes.

It seems like a simple matter. People would normally go, pfft duh at one point your lives depended on one another, how could you just forget a person like that or give up on a friendship as easy as that ? what kind of human being does that ?

I don't know why, but people do behave contrarily to that line of thought. Especially, once you've given up on friendships and keeping it together and shrug it off as "Well, people move on. It's just the circumstances that we're just not friends/lovers/acquaintances anymore." just because sometimes over time you drift apart or your experiences make you too different from each other that you don't meet half way, and the kind of, there's no cost to make an effort to keep it going, and no feeling of loss because it doesn't affect the quality of your life or you relationship needs as you have far better relationships at present to fulfill your social needs. "hmm yeah, it's not that we've never been friends, or I don't feel any appreciation at all. I would stay friends if I could. [but I couldn't be bothered. not so much out of spite. but because it was inconvenient. I got other things going in my life that will not make me think of it much. Like, it doesn't have a space in my head to be thought of as much. So, it is the same as if it were there or not there in the first place at all]."

I guess, that kind of feeling is made worse with social media when you can simply unfriend people when you grow tired of them. You don't feel guilt because some of them you're not even real friends in real life. They're just on your facebook because you happen to be interested in their timelines at that moment, or you had mutual friends.

Due to this word, circumstance, it made me think a lot about my relationships with other people. Were they really all a product of circumstance ? Did I befriend them only because they happen to be there at that time ? Did I befriend them due to particular intentions that I wanted something from them ? Or was I sincere ? Or did sincere friendships evolved from friendships made out of circumstance ?

and it made me think, what really, is, sincerity ? will you ever really know if relationships really were purely sincere ?

You can extend that to romantic relationships as well, and I find that even more starkly true, that my past relationships were all due to circumstance, not really out of sincere affections or attractions. It just so happens there were confessions and professions at certain place and time, and I had the power to decide which "experiment" I wanted carried out at any place and time. It made me really wonder if I ever really am capable of any "sincere" affections.

It's not that I don't value past experiences. It's not that I deny that they happened in the past, but I guess, my definitions of sincerity is too narrowly "purist" but at the same time pretty vague and beyond grasp. I don't know what I want, but I know for certain what I don't want, and I use that to define relationships.

Yes, I'm making a molehill of complexity out of an anthill. To be honest, I don't remember what the real expression was. Alright, it's getting late. I will be off to bed and I will  resume to my routine life as usual.

May I not see the ghastly peeking good night face by the window of my nightmares tonight. Good night.




*drugged. sedated. lethargic. drowsy. recovering. bed rest.

Comments

Fizah said…
Making a mountain out of a molehill is the expression, I believe. Also, now you've opened up a world of questions to run into my already cluttered mind.

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