“It’s only just out of reach, down the block, on a beach, under a treeeeeeeeee!”

I always thought those were oddly specific directions to something we aren’t altogether certain about.

(Okay, nobody explain to me please that Tony was citing several places where this marvelous, nebulous Something may be. I’m perfectly aware of what he was doing — so much so that I ruined my own joke. Dammit. Oh well. Better me than some random distant reader, who is purely hypothetical at this point yet nevertheless viciously and vehemently disliked)

In times of inner turmoil, many are known to immerse themselves in literature/content on the matter of love. Kind of like reading lists and advice for the newly single, or reasons to stay single/stay together/break-up/quit your day job and become a cam girl.. 15 reasons to love yourself. The One Thing You Need in order to stop snickering whenever you read “love yourself”, not every article you come across is about jerking off. And so forth.

We seem to have such rigid criteria for seemingly universal concerns that are easily addressed by potentially a complete stranger yet vary from situation to intimate situation . Sigh. Life, especially one’s lovelife, is fucking confusion on steroids.

I think we cope with the extreme and utterly embarrassing fact that we are in fact ourselves by pinning so much hope and enthusiasm on that it gets better. Because if things needed to remain this shitty forever, then not only is it a desolate thought of a tragic future — it is as if we didn’t try to make ourselves happy, to grow, to change. To stop rattling our own cages.

“I don’t know what it is, but it is going to be great”

We tell ourselves how to find what we’re seeking without knowing what it is, exactly, because the anorexic chance of it being far better than our shitty realities seems to have more weight than what is clearly and solidly in front of our sad little faces. Living in the present is so much harder than wistfully pleasing for the future, hoping against hope that nobody can smell desperation.