Wednesday, March 12, 2008

One Canvas

What lives have we to live to try out all we do. So obstinate do we act fueled by foolish pride. And years go by and years go by with a voice inside us telling us how sad we feel, asking us to change our ways and demanding of us to be happy, but our pride feels compelled to clamp that voice. By time our cries become attenuated whispers and none but our foolish years remain, none but they stand proud. Our pride goes old, it goes weary and remorseful over wasted time. It has not gained a thing by it's obsolete reslience, on the contrary it has caused all around it to lose.

One day we find the many lives we dreamed inside our heads have shrunk to only one, and one we lived. It does not look much like any of those we have inside our heads, we wasted all of those and wasted the remaining one too. We waste our lives because in the midst of our obstinacy we do have that mental image that things weren't so, that history had not been unkind, that time had not been so unforgiving. We think of times that were, and think what if things could change and nothing of that had been done ever was. What if we could forgive, what if we could forget, we think of this all in the midst of all our anger, sorrow and pride, but the king of fools steps in, pride, and though it be foolish, it's nevertheless a king. The king commands that all our childish dreams be vanquished to that high lonely tower labeled dignity.

Our hearts are foolish and are strong, they overpower the mind at times and delude us. The mind exists to please the heart, that's true, but sometimes a mind must win to give the heart what it doesn't know that it wants. The heart has tricked us all to think that we have more lives than one or that perhaps the life we live can give us years that are long.

One canvas is all we get and every stroke cannot be undone. One life is all we get with wasted minutes spent in anger and dismay. Countless minutes we spend hating those we love, pushing away those we need, forgetting who remember us. Countless days awaiting a change that can only be given by ourselves.

Have we not learnt that much from all our past? Have we not learnt from all the others never had? Love knows no pride but what do we do when life and love collide?

9 comments:

insomniac said...

*applause*

"Our hearts are foolish and are strong, they overpower the mind at times and delude us. The mind exists to please the heart, that's true, but sometimes a mind must win to give the heart what it doesn't know that it wants"

totally agree, i was just having those thoughts a couple of days ago!!!

Anonymous said...

why do you insist on sounding like an eighty year old hamlet

are you seriously asking about abandoning pride

and that mind heart stuff is nonsense to talk yourself into settling and compromising (sorry insomniac)-- that doesn't last

usually it's the heart that gives the wake up calls-- i mean, if you want to be shakespearean about it :)

--once adrasteia

Wael Eskandar said...

Well once adrasteia, there's no insistence here.. I sound like me and if you relate that to hamlet, then it's an association within you.

Compromise is when you compromise your happiness for the sake of pride.. compromise your forgiveness for the sake of pride..

The mind and heart each have roles that have been fixed from the beginning of time, don't tamper with them... the search for novelty just isn't worth it.. that doesn't last.

Nora said...

I think that the heart is much more forgiving than the mind...

Rarely does a heart send a wake up call...

Will, great post...

N said...

i've been reconciling between my mind and heart for so long... i can barely tell the difference between the two voices anymore..

once adrasteia; beware of brushing of someone with a bit more experience cause it defies your notion of romanticism. the heart alone may seem romantic, but there's nothing romantic about heartache.

insomniac said...

once adrasteia,

when the heart gives the wake up call, it's usually because it finally listened to its instincts, the very same instincts because of which the mind tried to warn the heart.... but the heart never listens until it's too late i suppose!


and will,

pride -as foolish as it can be-, is better than lack of it, no?

Wael Eskandar said...

sure inso, without some kind of pride there can be no respect.

Daysleeper said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daysleeper said...

heartache is incredibly romantic. how many people do you know that love to be martyrs? not in the political i'm going to blow myself up sense of the word obviously
people are still incredibly moved and love tragedy

as for the mind and the heart-- and their roles-- if they were so fixed, i doubt there'd be so much literature and interest in them

and as for the search for novelty--
i insist that it will last and it's a complete shame if it doesnt. look what the search for novelty has done for art

look what the search for novelty has done for science

the search for novelty builds us, and this condescension towards it is the conservative rhetoric that is just...so depressing will!

and finally as for compromise--
compromise is not only done for the sake of pride, in my opinion. if you mean to clarify that's the kind of compromise you were talking about in your post-- then i still feel it's quite simplistic, hamlety and silly.

i'm sorry but i sometimes really take offense to the way you phrase things, and you know this about me by now i'm sure

i mean for example your last comment: without pride there can be no respect

excuse me?
first of all do you mean respect in general or self-respect?

in the first instance, one could argue that respect has an element of fear in it, and fear in itself is in a way an acknowledgement of being less than someone/something else in their capabilities or whatever-- in that sense anything but pride plays into 'respect'

if you mean self-respect, this is more understandable as it's part of the definition of pride. then of course you can't have one without the other...they mean the same thing. which is again...silly.

okay. i've said my peace. go ahead and call me/think me inexperienced all you want now.

-once adrasteia