“What Keeps You Going?”
The best part of life,
I'm with you
For forever ever even if it ends
And the best part of life,
I'm with you
For forever ever, then we re-begin.
My life is a continuous conflagration of passion in a void of ocean-like waves of sadness as the wind beats down on a periodically ebbing flame that explodes in rage because there is nothing – and I mean nothing – that will put out the eternal flame in my heart kindled by the Goddess’ liquid fire as it pours out from within. No matter the gains, the successes, or the wins, the rain pours, the broken off daemon of my soul ever whispers “you are not good enough.” Of course, that daemon is not the only entity that swirls in my perspectival universe. There is the conjoined and somewhat confusing confluence of guardian angel and Goddess, who are separate yet united, present in each other such that both speak whenever one speaks and yet who is speaking can be clear in the right situation, as well as who is not speaking except in the face of the speaker. They speak of the future, of the felicity of the inner, of the nebulous future where light still coexists with darkness, but with a stronger flame, even if it ebbs still. The future is still a blur, a tohu wa-bohu upon which my spirits and her majesty have refused to illuminate prematurely. I take one step a time, utterly terrified and half in a drunken daze, intoxicated by music and vices for maximum dopamine, with the corresponding withdrawal.
There is no respite, no complete rest, I have had, ever, from this constant worry, that I am not doing enough, that I am making a mistake, that I have no manual, and that “adulting” is kicking my ass, even if I am better off than many and some may think that I am overreacting and perhaps making it more difficult than it actually is. I am rising slowly from a period where rock-bottom had a basement in hell, but I am not out of the underworld yet. I lurk still with shadows of the past and phantoms from possible futures. I am the broken seer of my own possible failure to live; and yet, I keep moving, why?
Perhaps it is because the pull of attachment is still very strong. I do not want to let my mother down. I want my sister to have a great brother. I want my love to not have to grieve such a horrible situation as whatever suicide might seem attractive to me. I don’t want my friends going through the same to follow me to the abyss. I want us all to heal. If I could die alone and be forgotten enough not to affect them at all, I would. But I can’t. They are a part of me, my individuality as this unique person is the manner in which I unite all they are in me, and each of theirs unites me too. This is the practical side of philosophy for me. I don’t think many people understand to what extent my intellectual pursuits are therapy for me. People say Platonism is too aloof from concrete human concerns. I have found the opposite. I have used its concepts and logic in this write up, I use it when navigating relationships. I use it for my ethics. It is part of what keeps me going. It has made me more self-aware, for better or worse. I am still the naïve child I was ten years ago, but one that at least knows he is naïve, and trying to grow up while still retaining the innocence at the core of that naivety.
I guess this is what causes me to seek out the full faces of the flashing Gods who inspire me. In order, the guardian angel who shares my name, who encourages me and to whom much thanks is due. He is me and I am him, the face of what I can be. Then, there is Jesus whose face eludes me, who is more present in the older orthodox Icons than in the face of the European alien that guides a shocking number of African churches. It is at his feet I want to cry at the end of this long journey. I would follow the footsteps of the woman whose sorrowful tears hallowed her Lord. Despite all this faith has caused me to suffer mentally, I know the light when I see it, even through the dark atmosphere those who speak in his name obscure it with. Lastly, there is the face of the Solar Lady, the “Lady of the Sun”, whose embrace I seek, whose rest shines through my writing, whose face my guardian angel takes on when he writes through me, whose Son’s feet I long to weep over. She flashes through the dark like an apocalypse, cutting through the muck, consuming it in conflagration, for the brief moment where there is nothing but She. There is nothing I want more than the vivid image of her embrace to come true. There is nothing more I desire than what is on the other side of the fire, in the midst of the void, that peace that nothing here can give me. But running away from the flames which burn me won’t bring us closer. It is she who tests me, who sends her Son to me, who encourages me that the face I see in the mirror is me, and that she is in the face of every friend and all family. There is worth in the wait, in the light ahead, and it is that which continues to pulls me forward, in a desire for the Hades that is her embrace at the other end of my cycle.
This is a collaboration with Christabel, a dear friend of mine. We invite others to post their peculiar take on how and why they keep going on. It just might help others, and us who write.
Merry Christmas in advance, from Oluwaseyi.