For years now, I’ve been on a search. Constantly trying to find words for the emotions I feel. Sometimes, certain situations in our lives, once so fulfilling and intimate, leave us empty. Without closure, we are left with questions and whether knowingly or unknowingly, we spend the rest of our lives trying to answer those questions.
Periodically, I pick books and material to read or watch that I feel may help me in my discovery of myself. I search for pieces that I anticipate will detail the rawness of the sentiments I may not necessarily have the expression for. Sometimes I succeed, and other times, I fail. And every once in a while, I stumble upon such genius that it feels even my own emotions were too premature for someone else to have even conceived of what I may have already felt all along.
Recently, I began reading The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. I am not entirely sure what I was anticipating to find but I was caught by the excerpt below that provides perspective to my thoughts above.
Ideally, art would give us the answers that other people don’t. This might even be one of the main points of literature: to tell us what society at large is too prudish to explore. The important books should be those that leave us wondering, with relief and gratitude, how the author could possibly have known so much about our lives.
The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
Last week, I binged an FX show, The Old Man, on Hulu. In one of the scenes, two male characters are speaking to each other about a woman who has been kidnapped and they are strategizing how to rescue her. She is a pivotal character and someone who each of the men considers to be his daughter-figure. Her history and upbringing is blurry and/or unbeknownst to her and thus she has many questions to which she is rightfully owed answers. In the dialogue between the men, the reluctance of one to provide such answers causes the other one to speak:
You want to control how she remembers you? What are the f******* chances of that? It’s the rememberers who get to decide when they are satisfied, not the remembered.
The Old Man, FX
The rememberers constantly have conversations with themselves. Assessing and analyzing pieces of information, or a lack thereof, over and over again. The remembered aren’t always there to provide insight and this brings about unfortunate results. It constantly gives rise to feelings of being on a journey, without direction, for which there is no end.
The general outcome ends up being only having more questions (and the same ones yet again) and the continued search for what the world doesn’t know and cannot provide.
The lines from The Old Man that I’ve highlighted above, the last line in particular, are just some of the many the feelings I hadn’t yet found the words for. The art the artists out there create continues to take me along in my journey and even though there doesn’t seem to be an end as of yet, I think it’s a beautiful thing to frequently peel my layers.
In some magical way, this feels like arriving.
💔 & ❤️
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