THE RAGING STORM
“A storm rages outside, it rages with a ferocity and a sort of calculated randomness”
I say my father's death changed me more than I know but if I was to say which way was the most obvious it would be the consciousness of my mortality. His passing was the first time I truly contemplated my mortality, and it was more gradual than spontaneous and I am appreciative of that as I feel that let the reality sink in more. I’d definitely seen other people dying before, but watching this force that held such a strong presence in my life now mark absent on my roster left a more permanent impression. It’s a moving thing to think the one who gave me life had life taken away from him. I’d go as far as saying when my dad was alive I felt immortal, I’d never truly comprehended that his absence was a possibility. Months after his passing I still find myself coming to terms with him in moments of solitude.
A part of me constantly questions the reality of life. Maybe reality is as tenable as it is fragile and we’re all in a simulation. Because how can something real be so fragile, so frail… have you ever seen a man die? As the determination in his eyes slowly turns into helplessness. As his dreams, desires and hopes turn into his last gasps of precious oxygen. Life is such a fickle thing. One day you’re on top of the world and the next day you’re six feet below serving nutrition to earthworms and other annelids occupying the subsurface of the earth. Life is such a fickle thing, but in the hands of this fickle thing is something so extremely powerful. Living. To live we need life, but life and living are not one and the same. I’m coming to that realisation more and more.
At two decades and two years, I’m trying to understand how to live more, trying to understand how to live in this fickle cocoon called life. I’m learning to be kinder to myself while I chase my dreams, learning to push myself while being patient with myself at the same time. I’m learning to understand my emotions before I express them and so these days I realise I am a mystery even to myself. A confusion of constantly changing ambitions, dreams and motivations. So nowadays I get lost in my head a lot more. I’m learning to be more patient in the face of an altercation, I’m learning to be more grateful to the Good lord for the trials and tribulations, learning to love my people with more openness. Finally, I’m learning about, struggling with, and sometimes failing on validation because validation means ambition and ambition sometimes is rooted in delusion and that’s scary. It's scary to think that maybe the extent of your capabilities is not rooted in reality. It is rooted in some idea of a person that only exists in your head and that idea is not true until it is tested by the world and the trials it inevitably throws at you.
I sat with my dreams and had an honest conversation. We came to a conclusion. You will not be as good as you have hoped to be. You will be undermined and you will crave recognition. You will realise that your driving force can not be recognition and you are not a “natural” at anything, but when you realise and accept all this, the process of becoming better becomes more freeing instead of being rooted in your belief of being special.
A storm rages outside, it rages with ferocity and a sort of calculated randomness. It scatters everything in its radius with a sort of chaos and disordered beauty. Does the storm wish to be impressive or simply express what its nature requires? When the storm subsides, onlookers stand in its aftermath and look in awe as that is all they can do. Their comments and remarks hold no sway on the storms art. The storm says “I am the storm, this is my art. This is my truth.” The storm is honest, the flood is honest. Their art is honest. How do you undermine the idea of myself when I am the storm on whom your opinions hold no sway?
