Why do I feel this way about you?

There exists no doubt in my mind what I’m meant to do—what I’m supposed to do. 

And yet there also exists no doubt in my heart, either. There persists an irrefutable yearning ensconced within it—an inexorable desire for passion, for love, for chaos. The frenzied rush of sex, the unmistakable warmth of two souls inextricably locked in an embrace, the invigorating sensation of a reckless wander into this war-torn and ruin-strewn battlefield of emotion.

In my mind, I know with certainty there is a cost. I know there is a risk. 

I know it will subjugate and oppress me. 

I know it will derail all semblance of rational thought, but

to see you smile,

to hear you laugh,

to feel your arms around me,

to put my arms around you, 

it would be everything.

Why? 

Why do I feel this way about you?

Manifestation

I wrote a little over two months ago,

The way we feel influences the way we act, just as much as the way we act influences the way we feel. What caused what? What influenced what? Where does it start? Where does it end?

We can decide what we do, but that decision is almost always entirely based on how we feel. And more often than not, we can’t choose how we feel.

The entire concept of manifestation and the law of attraction that has been looming up in the past decade is, at its core, an iterated expression of our internal desire that had already existed to begin with—no different than anyone who doesn’t actively practice this exact form of thought.

If our thoughts determine our reality, what reason do we have to believe that it doesn’t work in reverse—that our reality determines our thoughts? If an individual attracts what they think—if we just look at it from a slightly different perspective—are those same things not the very things that attract the individual?

In terms of our free will, to actively manifest our desires in thoughts, because it is all already implicitly manifested in our actions; it is all one and the same—all an inexorable, unceasingly capricious cycle of cause and effect.

ill

If the body ceases to be in good health, does not the mind as well?

Astray

Will how we feel lead us down a path of truth? Or will it lead us astray? 

There is no way to know—until it’s too late.

Consumed

It is all too easy to be consumed by questions of purpose, of meaning, of significance, of accomplishment,

but it is all too difficult to remember just how little it might take for us to live a good life.

The Latter

It’s easy to feel a sense of purpose in our lives—to feel as if we’re playing a part, a role in this world—when we choose to do something that we believe changes the world, whether by promulgating kindness and love, by ensuring the welfare of other human beings, by fixing something that seems fixing.

But lest we forget that there are those among us that have taken up an unsung role—those that promulgate hate and evil, that inflict suffering on other human beings, that break things that didn’t need to be broken. It is not possible for absolutely everyone to be doing the “right” thing, is it? If we posit that suffering is an integral component of a fulfilling life, that heterogeneity in character and in physique is a natural and necessary occurrence in the homeostasis of our world, that every force that exists in our world—good and evil, happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain, life and death, strength and weakness, abundance and famine, humility and pride, valiance and shame—must fundamentally be in balance, then the question inevitably becomes:

Who is responsible for the latter?

Change

As we might expect the sun to rise today, and as we might expect it to fall, we might expect that all else in the world follow the same pattern of consistency—the weather, the water that we drink, the food that we eat, the people around us, the very nature of our own existence.

Why are we surprised, distraught, and flustered when these things—fundamentally impermanent, inherently transient, in constant flux—finally decide to change? Do our minds truly weigh the probabilities of each of those occurrences in a manner that reflects the actual patterns of the universe?

Thoughts at rest

Written text, however, belies such impermanence and imperfection in thought, creating a space by which we can create something, amidst these torrents of time, that just might be timeless, and that we might create something that might dare to quell and encapsulate the chaos—the entangled mess of ideas, of reason, of emotion—that persists within our information space inside the mind.

Thoughts in motion

The beauty of conversation—the sparks of joy and intuitive human connection merely at the sight of an effervescent smile, of laughter that makes the soul dance, the timbre of our voices that vibrates within our bones. And yet, it is all but ephemeral—a fleeting procession of ideas that may never reach maturity, a transitory and chaotic interplay of emotion that not only overshadows but persecutes the purity of reason, shattering the structure of logic. It is a peculiar duality—between impermanence, amidst torrents of time, and staggering imperfection, wrought by imperfect beings.

What am I?

If I cannot control my emotions, what am I? What am I, but driftwood in an incomprehensibly vast ocean, ceaselessly tossed by the waves and dragged by the currents? What am I, but a ravenous predator in a desperate pursuit of a meal? Or am I the prey of such a beast, merely awaiting an inevitable fate? 

But if I cannot experience my emotions, what am I? What am I, but a faceless and featureless entity, a cog in an incomprehensibly complex machine, an actor in a plotless play?