Sunday, June 10, 2007

An Entry I Wrote The Other Night

June 7 2007

Dear Happiness:

I am so sorry I didn’t go after you tonight.

I knew where I wanted to be. But I also knew that getting there was not easy – it was unfamiliar, shady, and uncertain. So I made myself believe that I was actually thinking whether to go or not. I decided to do the latter. Because I was scared – scared of two things.

One, that something bad might happen along the way, and two, that the risk in One is not worth it.

Rewind last week - I was not scared then. And the following morning, despite an extreme headache, I knew that I was happy. Then I tried to look back and realized that I was happy then because I chose and did what I could do to be exactly where I wanted to be the night before – no matter how uncertain and dangerous it had been on the way.

Because although I knew clearly the First, I never thought of the Second.

And in the end, what did I get from all of this? It is one thing to want, and another to do something about it. It is one thing to want / desire happiness; and another to do as much as you can to have that happiness.

To sit by the window while looking at the world outside; and to go out that door and walk -
To want to be a writer, and to write -
To aspire of becoming famous; and to do a breakthrough -
To long to hear someone’s voice; and to call -
To dream; and to wake up to make that dream happen.

It is one thing to want, and another to do something about it. And most of the time, between in these two are grand gestures, giant leaps that involve risks, failure.

There is more to wanting. To want something is not enough.

We want; and when circumstances conspire to give us that chance to do something about this wanting – we miss it – because we hesitate. We make ourselves believe that we tried but deep inside, we know that we could have tried harder.