Creation

You’re probably wondering where I got it. Well, I’ll tell you. Not like you don’t already know. I mean, you are basically an extension of myself. You already know my deepest thoughts. Be that as it may, I still need to put it into physical form so that you’ll understand. Also, because thinking something and writing something are two very different things. After all, what good is a journal with nothing written inside? Not that you’re entirely empty either. You know things that no one else does. I never though myself much of a writer, but after receiving that small black notebook with a request from my dear friend, I figured I’d give it a shot. I found that the more I wrote, the more that I freed my mind from the endless drudgery of everyday life. At his request, I had begun recording not only my thoughts, but also my needs, my wants, my intentions, and my desires. Nobody knows this but myself. Not even my dear friend knows. You can never show vulnerability to others. If that’s one rule of survival, I know it well.

I’ll have to go back in time a little bit, put myself exactly back at that point in this flow of time that we call life. Honestly, it was just like any other day. Up at the crack of dawn to go to yet another soul crushing shift at the factory. Don’t get me wrong, I do like my job. To a certain point at least. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. In any case, I was making breakfast as per my usual routine. I can still remember the smoky aroma of the cured bacon I had gotten sizzling in that beat up old pan that my ex had given to me. It wasn’t beat up at the time, but after years of making myself eggs over easy every morning, it looked more like it belonged in the garbage than in my kitchen. And maybe it did. Money was tight though and I wasn’t exactly Martha Stewart. As long as it still retained some functional value to it, I would continue to use it until it fell apart or until I had a heart attack from eating too many damn eggs. Whichever came first. It’s funny how money is worth both everything and nothing at the same time. Most people would do anything, for the right amount. They would even kill for it. At the end of the day however, money alone had no power or value. It was more a concept than anything else. Sometimes I wonder what else in life is exactly like that.

“You need to learn how to survive, and a part of that is cooking your own meals,” she had told me at the time when she had handed it to me. It was at that exact moment I remember thinking, ‘Is this what life is? Is this all that life amounts to?' Waking up every day to go somewhere that I don’t want to go, to do something that, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t really want to do. Day after day, never ceasing, until one day I just keel over and some other sucker takes my place. Surviving isn’t the same thing as living. I wish I could tell her that sometimes. But she’s gone now. That morning, the smoke detector began emitting an ungodly screeching sound, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to this bleak reality that I was living. Who was I kidding? I would never go anywhere or see anything of importance in my lifetime. Of that, I was certain. I went about with the rest of my day and that same night I spoke with my dear friend.

“I don’t have any idea what I’m doing,” I confided to him. He looked at me for a long time. “None of us do,” he finally replied, blinking slowly. “But,” he continued, “Everything that you need is already within you. I know that once that spark is ignited, nothing will be able to stop you.

“On the same token however,” he continued, “I know that once you dull that spark and put it out for good, nothing will be able to move you.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. Feeling perplexed, I left his house that night and went home to think about what he had told me. I certainly didn’t feel as though I had everything that I needed. I was lost in the chaos that is the everyday. Every moment blurred into the next as if life itself were stuck in an endless loop, like a projector rewinding to the same dull portion of a film I had seen one too many times. All the same, I felt motivation to improve. I felt that life could change for me. I felt the tendrils of complacency slowly snaking their way around me, threatening to kill whatever spark I had left. But why did that mean that I should resign myself to a mindset of acceptance of lifetime misery? If what I wanted was real, then why shouldn’t I go after it? I went home that night and began to write in that notebook at a feverish pace. I wrote it all. Everything that I felt, everything that I knew, everything that I thought was real. I delved into a part of myself that I never knew existed. I realized I had been suppressing myself to conform to a society that idolizes wealth and power at any cost. This, in turn, only served to plant the seeds of greed in the minds of the people. Not only the greed for material items, but the greed for validation. I was conditioned to believe that the harder I worked, the more value that I possessed as a person. If I wasn’t a good worker, was I really worth anything? Sacrificing my physical and mental wellbeing for a society that could not care less if I dropped dead while I did it. Sacrificing my life for labor. I finally understood what my dear friend had been trying to convey. I was the shaper of my life. I was the creator of my future. I had all the power that I needed within me. After that night, I began to do what I wanted to do.

Looking back on it, the only thing that really changed was my mindset. Funny how a shift in perspective is all you need sometimes. I ended up writing a story for a competition that I actually won. Grand prize being, you guessed it, twenty grand. I never would have entered that competition if it weren’t for my dear friend and that little black notebook with my hearts desires spilled out onto the pages.

So now that you know how I came to acquire it, you’re probably wondering what I’ll do with the money. Well, just like the opportunities that life gives to us, moreover, like the undying flame ignited within myself to keep on persevering, the possibilities are infinite.