It is Monday 8:00 AM. At Publix fast lane cashier, he pays for his bottle of milk and bag of bagels. He is not the glamorous, engaged in fun, worry-free, and highly physical attractive man that our culture frequently depicts. His short white beard, his extreme thinness, and his wrinkle shirt with ‘war veteran’ sign portray an image that leaves him alone in the midst of people that divert their looks away from the possibility of discomfort involved if caught in conversation with him. With a wobble voice, he tells the cashier about the pride he feels for his war merits. His narrative conveys a long-lasting commitment to ideals and an irrefutable decision to strive. But, it is inevitable to perceive a tremendous struggle to continuing living with some integrity in a society that quickly judges by brand, appearance, and status. How is our look towards reality when we face moments, people, circumstances that break free from the security of the imposed and subliminal expectations of our environments?
Society and media constantly seduces into utopias that point at validating our self-fulfillment prophecies that suit our projects into one-size-fits-all happiness in dependency-free worlds with nonexistent conflicts or differences, full of pharmaceuticals, and 24-hour non-stop sex fantasies. But, we are not told that these utopias will only set ourselves up for imminent fall when faced with real time shows.
Through an easy-to-reach so called security goals, social and popular conceptions shape our attitudes towards our choices. Since very early years, we are surrendered by unrealistic Cinderella stories that build a protected place in our minds from where we fantasize with reality and secretly cultivate a distorted perception of the world we live in. A view that makes it seem more like television portrays in where we live up to unrealistic expectations about how others, life, and our happiness should be. This protected 'successful' view many times blind us away from the chance of being in contact with real life propellers and true life-like success. Anyhow, when we are in contact with them, we often do not know how to deal with the overwhelmed feelings they produce so we opt for magical unconscious exits.
How much consciousness do we put in every day choices? How real are our life scripts?
It is at hand to look up-to bubbled results as happiness thermometers, and even though we recognize the signs of rented and unrealistic goals, it is not that easy to live free from them since they act as emotional outlets: we desensitize from ‘what is real’ by objectifying people and judgments, bringing temporal security through a limited vision that encapsulates our stories and others in fixed predictable boxes. Our minds make great efforts to accommodate to these mandates (truly believing it is the best); otherwise, questioning if our life projects come from real possibilities could easily create cacophony that makes us feel uncomfortable around our own environment.
Living realistically is an everyday commitment to continue the walk with as much happiness as we can hold. But, to be able to hold, we need to consciously free space from bonds that pull our fears in and push our sense of duty out, restricting our vision into imagined destinations that are impossible to reach and in where people are impossible to meet; destinations that serve to the social fascination that glues us with others in ‘made in Hollywood’ machines turning our individuality into profound myopia.
Real scripts help us live fruitfully. Only by touching ground through empathy with ourselves and the other, we can be the writers of our own scripts. The writing process will require daily braveness, clarity and coherence, patience and a call for honesty... but, we won't have to deal with cleansing heavy make up every night.
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." (Jean-Paul Sartre)
Inés
2 comments:
Si el hecho real, crudo y duro, fuera tan importante en la elección de un amor...ten por seguro que las relaciones serían como el hielo...sin emoción ni riesgo, aburridas, perfectamente posibles pero sin ánimo de empezarlas.
Ser real en el amor es imposible porque lo que hay que trabajar es la capacidad de tolerancia y estima con quien deseas. Es mi opinión.
Por otra parte felicidades por la exposición del texto y su estructura narrativa.
Eduard
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you… You go where ‘shopping is a pleasure’ where no bullet is heard but yet a multitude of silence A.K.A. ‘friendly fire.’ He fought to protect the fabric of our Nation and all he got was a lousy, one-size-fits-all War Veteran’s shirt, all wrinkled by the non-stop silence treatment. Is this the homecoming this brave man hoped for? Was this how the land of the free and the home of the brave supposed to be?
This proud and brave man faces the real-time show daily and his life (then and now) is a script in progress that should be read {heard} and honored. His trench then kept him hidden from his most-feared enemy and now he sadly stands invisible to all struggling to live in a society where, come Monday morning’s dawn’s early light, his perilous fight can only buy him a bottle of milk and a bag of bagels.
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