What if

We are stressing over all the people we can’t be with, the people with whom our paths just do not seem to be crossing, we often force it to make it work when suddenly even the planes do not seem to fly in the right directions any more. We take those things as challenges, we try to change the circumstances and go against everything. We explain it away by circumstances, we believe that this time we can make it all different. We believe that it is all meant to be. But if it really was, would it have to be so difficult? Why do we think that difficulties and hardship is a good thing, and it is something we are meant to go through to get what we want? Does this fighting mentality also come from capitalism, or way back from the time we had to fight for our survival? But I hardly doubt it applies to the fight of keeping people in your life, just so one day they will love you and want you the way you do. We often cling to people and want to keep them as if they are things, or something that could be owned. But it is terrifying to lose someone or to feel like that you may never even see each other again. Then it is natural to try your hardest to make sure that will never happen, to make sure they are always there nearby. Because you have that ‘what if.. one day.’

And i am not sure whether it is a blessing or a curse. In a sense it gives you so much strength and motivation, your own hopes and dreams, it makes you work twice harder for that ‘one day’ to happen sooner. In a sense those are the lucky ones because they do not get to live the reality, they do not get the every day ‘lets hang out’ kind of things, they don’t get chocolate and flowers or whatever its called, but more importantly they do not get to ruin it. They do not get to make it ugly with all the arguments and bitter words, with fighting, screaming, crying, with watching someone leave - and although you are physically standing right there - there is nothing you can possibly do. You do not get to watch someone else do all these little things that annoys you so much in others, you don’t get to see them. It is almost like its always behind the scenes. And that is why it is also a curse. Everybody wants ‘happily ever after’ which implies forever right? Isn’t that also what you swear to when you get married? - Until the death do us apart. 

Perhaps we give too much meaning to the physical separation. But except for death, mental separation usually precedes the physical. There are so many of us who can’t stay faithful to their wives and husbands, let alone girlfriends and boyfriends. There are people who get to get married and divorce 5 times. There are people who get lured by the sexual desires for their coworkers or every other person they make eye contact with walking down the street. But they are also the lucky ones because they can just let it go. And if they start to feel something in their heart, their ‘what if’ is right there at their disposal - to try out and see. And once there is no more ‘if’ and you know for sure then you can let it go. Then you can walk past each other on the street, almost as if you have never met. And you could never look at them that same way you used to. Because you got to know them, and those parts of them that you don’t like. It is like admiring the painting, loving it for its colours and the use of brushes, for the thought through composition, and then finding out that the painting is copied from somebody else’s work, or worst of it, it's not even painted it’s a print from the original. But not everybody is fake and pretending, sometime what you find out is that the colours of the sunset that you so much admire is painted with blood. And not everybody is prepared to love that. We like the beauty but we do not like the depth of it. 

Others however crave that depth, because all they get to see is the picture of the painting, somewhere under the glass hanging on the wall in the room, which has a lock on it, in the building with whole security system behind it, somewhere on the other side of the world. Maybe if you were to open all the locks, if you were to stand so close to it, to explore all its depth, you would not even like the picture, you would get up and walk away as if it is nothing. Yet the unattainability, the what ifs keeps you hooked on it. It keeps your eyes on it even while you walk through 5000 different buildings with thousands of pictures hanging on the walls. Some of them being thrown to your feet, some of them flying right into your face, all are trying to get noticed. Yet all you want is that one picture. Because what if.. one day.