It often helps to look at your current set of circumstances with the eyes of your former self. Some years ago, you would have wished for the very things you don’t notice anymore. And this is not something to be shamed for or feel guilty about. It’s just amazing. It’s not your fault.
The whole world is trained this way. Trained not to notice. Trained to go to the next thing. Trained to veer towards what’s not available. What’s available is boring. Had. Done. What’s not available is a promise. Still to be. A dream.
And we love to dream. Dreaming’s all we got. Otherwise, it’s monotony. Being here. The ordinariness of what’s right in front of you. The lack of fulfillment of it and the discomfort of that.
The dream is so much more alluring than reality. It’s sexy, it’s yet to be, it’s anything you could want and more. The mystery. The fantasy. The yearning of it. It hasn’t solidified. It’s ethereal. And it’s a promise of fulfillment.
Everything in our world is about the dream. We can’t escape monotony fast enough. Monotony kills our illusions. Our fantasies. It kills the dream. The dream of fulfillment. The dream of yet to be.
On the other side of that dream is despair and this is why monotony kills us. Because monotony doesn’t distract from despair. In fact, it highlights it.
Despair . . . is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality—it’s a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.
Philip Slater