Why do we choose to be friends?

Within the entire expanse of this planet,

Out of the billions of souls that inhabit it,

No other reason—but for the very fact that we have crossed paths.

Mindreading

Why should I be frustrated when I don’t know how someone truly feels or thinks?

Do I wish for a world where we could simply read each other’s minds? Where we spurn the very things that give our friendships and relationships stories to be told—this strange dance of dizzying possibility and wonder, of delicate progression and anticipation, of fateful discovery and revelation?

As we should not wish for suffering to end, we should not wish for convenience in our lives that we would be better off without. To go against the natural order of the human condition is pure folly.

No matter

No matter what I feel,

no matter how intensely these emotions torment me,

no matter where this heart tries to drag me,

All that I do will, under any circumstance, be done with genuine kindness, tenderness, intention, justice, empathy, and honesty.

And the moment that I deem one of these as violated?

I will give up, no matter how much is to be lost, and start over.

It’s not you—

it’s the idea of you.

When I don’t actually know anything about you, when there exists no reason whatsoever to believe that we are compatible at any level, when nothing has even happened between us, why the heavy heart? Why the gut-wrenching feeling? Why the incessant daydream?

Irrespective of reason, irrespective of how patently idiotic these feelings are, irrespective of how much sheer willpower I possess to resist this feeling, this weight on my heart persists. Nothing I do or say has any effect on how I feel whatsoever.

There mere anticipation of love—the momentous conception of the thought of possibility in this restless heart—however completely and utterly detached from any facet of reality, is enough to wreak such havoc in this mind of mine.

I didn’t choose to feel this way.

But perhaps the most confounding question of all:

If I did have a choice, would I still choose to feel this way about you?

To discern

To fall in love and find nothing—there exists no greater waste of time, energy, and attention.

But to fall in love and find love—there exists nothing quite as momentous, visceral, and irrevocably true.

And I speak as if I had a choice between them—as if any semblance of reason survived to discern which is which.

Here I am, again.

Here I am, again, on the brink of falling in love.

How peculiar—this normative state of mind that I now have, this acute self-awareness, this ability to at any moment detach, however momentarily, from the chains of my present circumstances. But it seems I am still consigned to the same helpless predisposition—an irreversible, frenetic spiraling of my emotions into utter chaos, impelled by quixotic tendencies and an undeniable, ravenous desperation for love.

Compared to my past self, while I think vastly differently, it’s not as if I feel any differently. It’s only now that I feel in my rational mind as if I’m an innocent bystander to this chaos, witnessing the storm brewing in the distance. Do I view it with disdain or with awe? With contempt or with appreciation? With fear or with hope?

But no matter what I think, no matter how much I try to reason with this insolent and tumultuous heart, I will never prevent the unpreventable. Despite how much I think that I’ve changed, how much that my mind has garnered a sense of resilience, I will nevertheless become helplessly stranded amid this raging ocean, swallowed by this sea, and the feeble comfort of this rationality—viciously wrested from my consciousness by the inexorable pull of this whirlpool of emotion.

To truly live

To suffer and merely suffer—this is true suffering.

But to suffer and simultaneously realize that it’s the only thing that makes this existence worthwhile—this is simply what it means to truly live.

As If

With every reason to be happy, and with none to be unhappy, I still somehow end up choosing to be unhappy.

As if there was a choice.

As if there was reason.

Volatility

My emotional volatility is generally very low. In the vast majority of circumstances, whether in work, daily life, friends, or family, I am content, stoic, and grateful that I’m able to be here at all, even to suffer.

But there exists one catalyst in particular that never fails to instigate a relentless and inexorable chaos within my heart—love.

My mind is inundated with the heart-wrenching thoughts of finally finding my soulmate, of the warmth ensconced within their soul, of satiating the surly and voracious beast that prowls within me. And in that moment, I realize that I cannot control how I feel. My mind can only intercede, but this intercession is but a measly rock amid rapids, merely diverting the torrent of emotion that rushes downstream.

In that moment, it is a fateful choice between full-fledged, brutal war with the heart or submitting defeat entirely, consigning myself to be being helplessly dragged along by it on an unknown path.

How Are You Doing?

When someone asks me, “how are you doing?”, that is, with the genuine desire to know how I am actually doing, how do I answer?  

When the mind is at peace while the heart is at war, how do I truly feel? Is it exclusively the former, the latter, or a combination of the two? From the perspective of my mind, are those feelings truly mine?  

Often, I find myself feeling ashamed to feel a certain way, as if I am enduring an ailment or some embarrassing condition induced by some external source. Insofar as I seek to live my life with a rational clarity and emotional sobriety, there is little doubt in whether I need to quell these feelings. But—and there always seems to be a but when it comes to how I feel—the truth is that how I feel is not induced externally, but completely internally; it is fundamentally who I am. The question then becomes—is it worth embracing every aspect of myself? Have I been far too strict in extricating every facet of the mind from the heart? What is the purpose of this ambivalence that persists in my consciousness?  

But yes, I’m doing just fine.