exiled.

Are we too old for idealism? Or is the world too pragmatic? Why do adults scoff at youthful pursuits of grandiose?

My parents look at me like I’m a nut in dire need of psychiatric help every time I happen to mention something – anything that hints of my dreams or ideologies or philosophies. Any attempt to rationalize things invariably warrants a heated argument about pragmatism and “why can’t I be normal like everybody else?”

I happen to like to be weird.

I cannot help but wonder if life would be different were I born to a family of kinks and liberal insouciance. A family where my laughter and my songs will not die in the arid lifelessness of the air.

Even that is not easy to imagine. I’ve reached a point in my character development where I’m stuck. I’m an in-between. I’m not practical enough to fit into the prosaic and neither am I imaginative enough to thrive in the radical. Here, my fear of mediocrity mounts.

I have grand dreams. But my inadequacy impedes them. And it depresses me to no end. I can drop these dreams, leave them to people more equipped to accomplish great things. If, at the end of my life, I’ve achieved even a small fraction of my dreams, that would be enough. But I wonder, when the time comes, whether I would still have the courage to set forth. Whether years of monotony have quenched my thirst and subdued my spirit. Do I still have that wanderlust, a voice steadfast enough not only to speak for myself but also for the people who can’t themselves, and the hands robust enough to better lives?

But I am selfish. I wonder if because of this, God will not grant me enough strength. All these dreams grow out of a self-serving agenda to bury myself in other people’s problems because my own monsters are too hard to face. My desperate desire to find myself by losing myself first.

I want to leave. Just the primitive flight instinct.

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