Tag: philosophy

thoughts

~ Infected ~

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~ Infected ~

“One day in this life you realise you are infected with the condition of being an outsider. The symptoms are revealed to you gradually. As you walk the neighbourhoods of normality you realise your heart yearns for something else. Stability and security only give you a feeling of sadness. You have no interest in the contract of life offered to you. As you stare at the rows of houses and green lawns and shiny cars, as you look up uninterested at career ladders before you, as you stare wistfully into space in the supermarket queue, you gradually begin to realise that something isn’t quite right about it all. Every ounce of your being rejects the things you were told to desire. What gives you fulfilment simply isn’t available in their stores or on their menus. You have no interest in material riches or status. Their television shows and newspapers are toxic poison to your mind. You are allergic to their conventions and expectations. The suits and ties don’t fit you. What is important to them, to you seems utterly meaningless and trivial. In your world adventure and exploration and art rank above all else. Yes, accept it: you have the alien madness – the condition of being an outsider. You are infected. Do not trouble to even try and cure yourself, it will only make you worse. No, no, no: forget the therapists, forget the sensible advice, forget trying to fit into a society which doesn’t fit you. Do not trouble yourself. Here is what you shall do:

Let the infection take over. Let your eyes become bloodshot with blinding passion. Let your skin be shed, let your soul be set on fire – let that heart of yours become filled with poetry and madness. This is it: you were never one of them anyway, and the sooner you accept you never will be, the more powerful your mutant soul will become. You will liberate yourself from society and walk those streets with a rare strength and joy – a feeling of freedom not known or understood by those who define themselves in groups. The world around you will glisten with magic – you will see things they can’t see; do things they can’t do; go places they can’t go. You will attract strange glances and stares – sometimes in secret admiration, sometimes in fear. You will terrify some and inspire others beyond belief – and as the infection spreads further, you will grow stronger and stronger – fiercer and fiercer. Nothing will be able to hinder you. Things like isolation and rejection will only fuel your desire further. No cage or poacher will be able to capture your wild heart. You will be unstoppable like a storm; you will be impenetrable like a mountain. You will live the life of a fearless adventurer and go to the grave knowing that your life was lived with absolute fullness. The flowers around your grave will blossom with an exotic beauty; the birds will sing songs about your adventures at your headstone. You will have been totally consumed by your passion. You will have stayed happily infected till the end of your days. You will have died knowing that this world could never find a cure for your beautiful madness.”

infected

~ A Storm from Within ~

“It takes courage to be yourself. It takes courage to walk your own path. It takes courage to pursue the life you truly desire and not the one expected of you. Too often you will be surrounded by those who want to see you fail; by those who will seek to pull you back into the darkness in which they dwell because your breaking free causes them to reflect on their own choices and limitations. Throughout the ages of human history the mavericks and pioneers and dreamers have faced such a challenge when liberating themselves from cultural conformity and convention. Many are tamed and return to the safe farm of normality with their dreams and desires slowly gathering dust in dark, forgotten corners. Many let those voices of fear and doubt also infect and infest their own minds. It’s no easy feat to break free from the mould to live a life of total authenticity and personal truth, but there will be ways to stay strong to who you truly are as you walk the path through the wild to the shores of your destiny. Stuff your skull full of madness; overload your heart with passion; summon a storm from deep within your soul. Shake some windows, rattle some walls – let the words of your heart rain down mercilessly upon the blank pages of the world. Don’t apologise for the mess and madness. Let your spiritual thunder awaken this world into life.

Let your soul’s lightning ignite the darkness of the night.”

storm

 

thoughts

~ A Secret Space ~

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“The words of mockery came at me and I realised at that point I had broken through to a new realm. People’s thoughts and opinions of me no longer had any power over my emotions. I was my own man, and it struck me how blessed I was to be able to live life without striving for social validation. So many people secretly craved to live life not controlled by worries of what others thought of them. It was no easy thing to do after all. We are all social beings that thrive on others’ acceptance, and it truly takes a bit of insanity to overcome this aspect of human nature. And the bigger the crowd you have to fit into, the more of your own individuality you will have to sacrifice. This is why the true individual thrives on his or her solitude. It’s in that uncorrupted space where the noise of society fades away. It’s in that space where the inner voice is heard, new perspectives realised, and art created. This space becomes more addictive the longer you spend in it, and when you return to the crowd and see the masks being worn and the social game being played, you will inevitably only crave to avoid it as much as you can. Solitude becomes a way of protecting your unique essence. And maybe people will think you’ve gone crazy, but you simply won’t care as you know that you have discovered the great secret – the secret that learning to not be dependent on others’ approval is the key to a life of personal truth, authenticity, integrity, and freedom.”

~ The Crazy Ones ~

“Always the crazy ones were discussed with hidden interest. Some were mocked outright, and others were affectionately referred to with lines like “she’s a bit different” or “he’s a bit out there”. Whatever the case, it seemed most people had a subconscious fascination for the alternative mind. People would stand back and observe them as if they were a rare species – some kind of exotic bird with pink feathers. Mostly they fascinated me because they were the creatures who had jumped the fences of normality; they were the ones who hadn’t subscribed to the current version of sanity which helped us all enjoy small-talk down the pub. To me that was a liberating quality I couldn’t help but envy. Without being shepherded on the farm of conventional thought, you were free to invent yourself and be whatever you wanted to be. And what was more desirable than that? In a world that said the winners were the rich people, or the famous people, or the good-looking people, to me it was the crazy ones – the people living life on their own terms – who were life’s greatest success stories.”

thoughts

~ Make Room for the Dreamers ~

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~ Make Room for the Dreamers ~

“There seems to be a constant unspoken truth that pervades our culture, so please allow me to go ahead and just say it. Some of us were just not born for the norm. We have spirits that don’t fit into suits; we have passions that do not translate to job roles; we have desires that cannot be fulfilled by any product. We normally share the same story: we grew up feeling out of place with everything and everyone. We were in conflict with society due to its nature to try and shape us into something we were not. And we often have to bite our tongue as we sit quietly in groups. Well for once listen up and take a moment to hear our voice: we see the world a little differently to you, we have different priorities, and many of us would choose death before drifting through a life that did not truly fulfil our souls. It is because of this nature why we do the things we do. Whether it’s running fifty miles in one day, or travelling the world in a van, or writing poetry books – we do these things because we must do them. And I don’t know if I speak for all the other misfits, but I for one will not keep apologising for being the person I am. Yes, to many I know I may be a little strange and crazy – but god, if I hadn’t turned into what I am now, I would have long ago kicked the bucket. The life I am living is the one I must, and it is the same for every eccentric dreamer you know in your life. So please, get used to us and make room for the dreamers, make room for the artists, make room for the crazy ones. 

We are here to stay.”

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short stories

~ The Hills Above The Cities ~

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~ The Hills Above The Cities ~

A brain overcharged by absurdity; a soul starving for something real. Another day of menial work and superficial interaction had left me craving a space of solitude. Like I had so many times before, I took myself up to that hill that overlooked my hometown. Standing above that urban expanse with its rows and rows of streets sprawled out before me, I cast my gaze outward and watched the city lights shimmering in the night. There they were: the flames of humanity flickering in the abyss of the universe; the human race floating through space, going about its transient existence. I stood there for a while and absorbed the sight. From the outside looking in, I thought of all those people living in those houses, walking those sidewalks, staring into those televisions and bathroom windows. I thought of the families at dinner tables, the lovers entwined on sofas, the friends laughing together in the bars and clubs and restaurants.

In that moment a great feeling of isolation crashed over me. In vivid detail, I began to realise just how much I was cut adrift, floating uncontrollably further and further away from those shores of human belonging. And no matter how I looked at it, there seemed to be no way to pull or anchor myself back in. It had always been this way from a young age it seemed. The times I tried to fit myself into the herd had torn and twisted me up beyond repair. I simply didn’t understand my fellow species, or any of their customs. I didn’t understand the conventions. I didn’t understand the expectations and traditions. I didn’t understand why everyone wanted to be the same rather than live a life true to themselves. It was all a great mystery to me: the jobs, the media, the school-system, the paperwork, the small-talk, the religions – the monotonous routine. It seemed that I was allergic to it all. In my most desperate times, I did try to fake it, but like an undercover alien with a bad cover story, it was never long before people cast their looks of bewilderment upon me, before they realised that I was not one of them – that I was an intruder.

It’s not that the situation of isolation was completely soul-destroying, of course. There was a great joy to be found in sailing your own ship, in walking your own path and getting lost among your own mountains of madness. Often I felt great pleasure in not being labelled and closed in to some sort of box of limitation. There was a sort of freedom that many people never got to taste, let alone fully explore. But still despite that, I was burdened with the situation of being a human-being, and like all human-beings I needed to stare into the eyes of someone who understood – of someone who recognised me for who I really was. I guess for a while on my travels I looked out for those people, expecting to find them on sunset beaches and sitting wistful-eyed in smoky bars in foreign lands. Sometimes I was even lucky to find one or two, but the interactions were usually short-lived, lasting only a few hours or days at the most. Like captains of two ships briefly passing by in a wide ocean, we stared into each other’s eyes and exchanged knowing glances before disappearing silently into the mist.

Yes, the more I stood there on that hill and thought about it, the more it seemed this was the destiny of someone like myself. The cards had been dealt and I knew deep down in my flesh and bones that it was my fate to sail alone, to get lost in the mazes of my own mind, to dwell in solitude among those mountains of madness. This was how it was; for some reason I would never fully understand, this is how it was. I guess by now it was just a matter of acceptance: a matter of accepting that I was a lone wanderer – a matter of accepting that I didn’t belong. I guess by now it was a matter of accepting the fact that no matter where I went in this world, I would always return to those hills above the cities, standing alone, staring up into the skies, looking for something – anything – to come and take me home.

thoughts

~ Haunted ~

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~ Haunted ~

“After another night of reckless behaviour, I went and faced that morning mirror. I looked into my eyes and saw a harsh truth staring back at me. It was one I had always tried to avoid. Something dark and sinister lingered inside of me. It was always there stirring in my soul, haunting the hallways of my mind, whispering into my ear in moments of peace and happiness. I didn’t think I was to ever get rid of this parasite inside of me. It patiently waited for its moment to lure me back into the darkness; to pull me back to the periods of self-destruction and madness. And even when I thought I was finally rid of it – that my life had finally become one of sanity and order – there it would appear once more in my reflection. A twisted smile, a sinister stare, reminding me that it would always be there inside. The thought hit me that perhaps this sickness is not something I am meant to be cleansed of, but only learn to live with. It was a fundamental part of my being and I had to embrace the fact that maybe I wasn’t the pure-hearted guy I believed I was. And when I looked back at my life and my behaviour over the years, I began to understand why things had been how they had been. Some of us struggle to let the light touch our souls, because deep inside we know the darkness is where we truly belong.”

thoughts

~ Another Happily Scarred Dreamer ~

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“Still going crazy. Still running after whatever sets my heart on fire. Still answering the call of the soul, no matter where it takes me to. It’s a sickness I guess, but one that I am happy to suffer from. We are all sick with something. Sick with love; sick with regret; sick with fear. I have chosen to be sick with abandoning myself to whatever speaks to my soul. There’s no middle ground for me, and by now I am that there is something incredibly real inside of me. I have been asked to ignore or suppress it – even to kill it. But the blatant truth is that this thing inside has caused me all the good in my life. Each year I follow my heart, the happier I am facing that mirror. In that reflection stands a man who had the courage to give life a real shot. Who had the courage to allow himself to feel the pain so he could feel the joy. To know the lows so he could know the highs. To experience the horror so he could experience the ecstasy. Life is a crazy ride, and for me the only way to live it is to put the pedal to the metal and drive fast into its wilderness. To get lost in new lands. To get your heart broken into a million pieces. To dive deep into the darkness, thinking that you had finally met your end, only to emerge into the light and stand stronger than ever – the ruler of your own heart and the maker of your own destiny. It’s a path that is not straight-forward, and one that will leave you with marks, but I stand here now – another happily scarred dreamer – telling you that, yes, the journey of following the heart is undeniably the only way to truly live.”

poetry

~ A Hidden Wonderland ~

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‘A Hidden Wonderland’

Somewhere deep inside your soul
there is an abandoned amusement park
waiting to be explored again

its entrance is taped off
its grounds sit shrouded in fog
but somewhere in there lies eternal bliss
the bliss the demons sweat in terror
at the thought of you finding

the rides await your screams of ecstasy
the candy floss awaits your taste-buds
the neon lights wait to shine bright
and the only admission cost
is that you are brave enough to venture in

in this life there is no tragedy greater than
allowing your inner joy to slowly decay
to allow the roller-coasters to rust in the rain
and let a heart creak hauntingly in the night

the reason this happens;
the reason your joy lies abandoned –
is because they made you forget
that you are the gatekeeper to your own wonderland
that the magic is found inside you, not outside

but if you would only remember who you really are
than the power will return within
the roller coasters will start up again
and the lights blaze bright once more

because somewhere deep inside your soul
there is an abandoned amusement park
waiting to come alive again

so go on in
through the mist
beyond the tape
and rediscover the joy
like a wide-eyed child
dazzled and delighted
curious and captivated
alive in the night once again

shining brighter and greater

than ever before.

short stories · thoughts

~ Falling Again ~

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falling
~ Falling Again ~

“I think you need to just relax and take a step back,” she said. “You run into things too easily.”

“I can’t help it, it just takes hold of me. It’s like I don’t have a choice.”

“Honestly, you remind me of my dog – just running around wildly, chasing everything that attracts you. It must be exhausting to constantly be that way.”

“That’s funny; I’ve been told that before. But hey, at least we all like dogs, right?”

“We do but dogs are animals ruled by instinct; you have deeper feelings, you just need to make sure you don’t get hurt.” 

“I don’t mind getting hurt. I’d rather that than to not follow my heart.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Probably,” I said.

The sentiments of my friend were nothing new to me. It seems I had that classic problem: falling in love with things too easily, and throwing my heart into them with reckless abandon. I was doomed to get hurt, and I was told to be more careful, but holding back my love was even more painful than the inevitable heartbreak that would naturally ensue. I just couldn’t help myself. I fell in love with anything that stirred my soul. At first, I fell in love with the world around me. With the rivers and the woods and the fields and sunsets. I then fell in love with travelling: the sight of new people and places, grabbing my backpack from the airport conveyor-belt, staring out of the bus window and knowing that I was soon to step off into a new town. Like a flower in my heart, I poured adventure onto it and let it grow wildly. I saved up all my money and obsessed over my next trip, neglecting things like clothes and food just to get there. And when I was back in those foreign lands with a world of possibility at my feet, I felt that flower blooming in my heart with a total love for what I was doing.

I fell in love with the art of writing. The act of expressing yourself and bringing people into your world; to share your things from the deepest recesses of your heart. That feeling of relief when you got out the things you had always wanted to say, and knowing they could actually mean something to someone out there. How it could give them strength and remind them that they aren’t alone in this world. And all it took was having the courage to type your truth out onto a blank page. It made my fingertips twitch with a fervent energy. It made me stay up ’til the early hours of the morning strumming away on those keyboard keys.

I fell in love with people. With the artists and adventurers; with the sight of a soul who was radiating pure joy and passion. I remember feeling blue one day, then going for a walk in the city and watching this guy busking with his guitar. He told his story about how he had gotten laughed out of his office when he told them he was quitting his job to become a street performer. He also told how he had just been diagnosed with autism, and had all these other revelations in his life, but there he was: travelling around Europe in his van, living life on his own terms, entertaining a captivated crowd with some of the most beautiful playing I had ever heard. I looked at his smile as he strummed those strings and saw the light of the entire cosmos shining through him. That was someone I aspired to be; that was someone I loved.

Rather predictability, I fell in love with girls. With the way they walked and talked and played with their hair. With their smiles and little imperfections. With the looks in their eyes which made you wonder what their story was and what secrets were locked away in their hearts. Sometimes I could get hung up for weeks on a girl I had passed on the street, and the little romances in my life took me years to get over. And probably people thought I was crazy, but I just couldn’t help but throw myself completely into the wilderness of another human-being even if I knew it wasn’t going to work out. For me, the pain was worth it, just because the act of falling in love was like feeling a great universal truth flowing through me. It just made sense; like the rivers running into the ocean, the feeling of loving was like going home to some ineffable divine life source.

Yeah, I guess that I am a bit of a starry-eyed dreamer, a hopeless romantic as they say, but I believe most human-beings are secretly this way, only most have learnt to hold themselves back. The natural state of a person was to love; and when you look at a person when they were in love with someone or something, you could see the entire cosmos shining in their eyes. That divine light was inside us all, but the human condition makes it such a challenge to let it shine. As our lives go on, we get worn down and made cautious by the world. We build walls and barriers. We get turned bitter and resentful by the lovers who did not return our love, by the people who belittled our dreams, and by the struggles of everyday life which slowly made us jaded and deflated. Indeed, it can be a great test to keep your heart truly open to the world when the daggers have pierced you and the days tired you and the lovers betrayed you.

Sometimes it is so far buried that it didn’t appear to exist in a person at all. But I believed even the most closed and bitter individual had that love somewhere inside of them, ready to burst out when under the right circumstances. It was just a matter of getting them into the right space to let it come. I remembered one middle-aged man I met travelling. He told me how he had been depressed and angry with life for a few years following a bad divorce, but he had finally moved on by selling his house and moving abroad. He was now travelling in Spain with his new girlfriend, back to pursuing his passions of writing and playing the guitar. Only a couple of years ago he had been a depressed, bitter individual with a contempt for his existence, but now the light was back and beaming bright in his eyes. And ultimately, it was because he had allowed himself to dust off the hinges and open his heart once again to the world.

Yes, in a world where it was easy to close yourself off, it can be a test to constantly love without fear and filter, but this was always what I sought to do in every aspect of my life; to let my love be poured into whatever it was I was passionate about. And maybe I needed to believe it, but I believed that love was the answer to everything. Because this was what I always felt, this deep ineffable feeling pulling me towards whatever was good and worthwhile in my life. It had taken me around the world; it had taken me to find my passions; it had taken me to find the people who inspired and changed me; it had taken me from the haunted woods of depression to the open fields of light and life. This passion for everything which was surely found in the hearts of stars and the breaking of waves and the roots of flowers. It was an intrinsic energy that was essential for a human-being to truly be alive, and though allowing yourself to love completely meant you would leave yourself open to feel more pain, it also meant you could also feel a greater amount of joy and connection to the universe.

As time goes on, there are times when the world tests me to close myself to it, but ultimately I know I’ll never shake this overwhelming desire to run towards what my heart aches for. Right now, writing these words and dreaming up my next adventure, I am still letting that flower grow wildly in my heart, and by now I know will always be that starry-eyed dreamer, running towards what I love with wise arms and an open heart. Still a hopeless romantic; still that dog running around wildly after everything that attracts me; still writing these words and feeling the light of the cosmos flow through my fingertips. Yeah, I guess I’m still falling, I don’t ever intend to stop throwing myself into this beautiful pain.

thoughts

~ Breaking the Barriers ~

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“All I wanted to do was to live, but there were barriers and boundaries which prevented it from happening. It was the machine of the routine life. I could see it in the stuttering traffic jams, in the ticking clocks, in the computer loading screens. I could see it in the forced smiles and the predictable small talk. The repetitive nature of everything going round and round until you became some sort of machine yourself. Your days and weeks became as predictable as clockwork. It was like we were all creating and working toward something, but the act of finally enjoying what it was we had created never came. It was that perpetual loading screen. The stuttering traffic jam. The clock that never struck the time we waited for. The feeling of completeness which never arrived. It was a constant push and slog through life, and often my eyes would look to nature to remind myself of the true rhythm of the universe. Those birds swooping and soaring; those leaves fluttering in the wind; those clouds dancing in the sky. It seemed we had deviated so far from the natural order of things. We were out of sync with the physical universe, which was no doubt the reason why we were so destructive toward it. The reality of it was suffocating and at times I stared up at the sun and felt a great fire roar in my heart. All I wanted to do was to shake off the shackles of society, to smash the clock and emerge back into the untamed way of life. A way of life of nature and beauty. A way of life of peace and harmony. A way of life that allowed us all to flow free like the breeze, rather than trudge in the swamp of the system we had created.”

thoughts

~ To See Things Become Sane ~

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~ To See Things Become Sane ~

“Peace and happiness came to me at times; I knew it was always there, like the blue sky behind the clouds. No matter how bad the storm got and how much the rain drenched me, I felt that it was a passing thing; that underlying at the core of the universe was this eternal state of bliss. And often I looked at the rivers flowing, and the birds singing, and the sunlight shimmering upon the water’s surface. I could feel it in my bones that I was a part of something magical and beautiful, and I didn’t need to stuff it into a box and label it as a god; I could walk the paths and the woods and know that I was connected to everything at a fundamental level. No words or concepts were necessary. I was walking divinity, and the people who passed me also were. Their eyes gleamed like diamonds; their skin shone like sunlight. Each and every one of us was a work of the whole cosmos, a piece of poetry in motion. And yet it made me sad how few realised this. So many out there were marginalised and disempowered by their cultures. They were constantly made to feel they weren’t good enough. They compared themselves to others; they numbed themselves with pills; they missed the beauty of life while stressing about trivial things. These mental bubbles we lived in clouded our vision from the obvious reality that was unfolding. And maybe it was the shamanic side of me, but I couldn’t help but want to stop people and remind them that they are the entire universe in motion. To shake them awake and see their eyes light up like dawn skies and their minds become as clear as fresh mountain snow. To see things become normal. To see things become sane.”

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