One day i destroyed something I loved. It’s the best way to be angry at yourself. I looked at the evidence of what I’d wrought, and I realised that it happened because I didn’t care.
My version of loving it, was enjoying that I had it, I showed some small concern that perhaps I was enjoying it too hard. All the while wishing to continue having it. I had a small delusion in my head that I was doing enough for it by using it, so if it should cease to exist I would be quietly think that I did all I could for it. I’d still be sad about losing it. I would be sad that it left me, when in reality I pushed it away. Fighting it. Sometimes rough-handling it.
I would be sorry for losing it; which was feeling sorry for myself that something I loved was hurt. I would feel frustrated and angry, that the “trying” was not working, which would then lead me to think that the reason it is not working is because I am defective as a human being. This logic then tells me, that being a defective human being is why I can’t possibly do anything, since just “trying” doesn’t work. Then the idea fuels a feeling, that influences my actions, that fuels the next feeling, which turns it to a feedback loop of sadness and delusion.
How could I have been so delusional to think that I was doing all I possibly could for it? All that it is, is carelessness. It’s the most ridiculous idea in the world. How can one love something and not care for it? I didn’t try to ensure it’s continued existence, I simply wished for it. I felt a feeling. I felt a feeling and thought that it was enough.
Feeling feelings are not enough. Not for positive ones. Not for negative ones. To care for something is to not let it slip from your fingers. It’s taking it upon yourself to not simply wish but to act, all so that you can prevent what you care about from being destroyed. So that you’ll never have to scold yourself for standing idly by while it happened, worse still, using your own hands to take from yourself.
Love is caring. Caring is love.
Adetunji Openiyi is a creative, living in Kharkiv. He watches life go by and makes pretty pictures for a living.
