Tag: sunshine

I hadn’t much considered the prospects of tomorrow. Perhaps it was that tomorrow existed in a space and time that I could never quite wrap my head around. The unpredictable nature of it all made it feel more like an illusion then a place I may one day visit, much like a mirage in the desert. And just like a mirage perhaps it is a symptom of dehydration. It may be that any disease that causes the warping of the concept of reality, or even reality itself, in one’s mind is where it comes from. The result of a sickness that has long since taken it’s hold on humanity. Replacing any fragment of cynicism with hope, and the avenue through which this was achieved was with the destination of tomorrow, and the logic that if you add all your tomorrows up, you may arrive at an even more astonishing place.

The sum of tomorrows is bliss

Walking through the desert, sand blistering against your skin, your body slowly betraying you, achingly moving towards ultimate demise. Then the allusion to water; an unfulfilled promise, yet a promise that relies on your body acting against it’s natural deterioration, finding within itself a reserve energy bank, kept locked deep and hidden away, but awakened at the prospect of survival. Awakened by the hope that the images are real, that there are in fact palm trees, in the desert, that those ancient palms may bear fruit. That, if there are trees, there must be a source of water, because vegetation needs hydration to sustain itself. And if there may be but a drop of water in a dried up basin, that the basin may be the result of a much larger body of water. And if there is water in the desert, then surely there will be a town, and the town will undoubtedly see merchants come and go, and those merchants may travel as far as the sea. Should they travel that far then there would be a dock with ships, and perhaps one weary old captain would take pity on one who had such a long and tiresome journey that he would agree to take you aboard and all you need do is pull your weight on deck, and soon you would be home and far from the desert and it’s unforgiving sun and sand.

So, in the desert, it was not just the palm trees that give the traveller strength, but rather the sum of the possibilities. Similarly, there is tomorrow, which is often difficult and dreaded, but the sum of tomorrows is bliss. 

Herein, I find my heart heavy. Of course, we do not always consider each and every link in the chain reaction, our minds do that for us; quickly deducing all the possibilities and most likely outcomes. In this way, it is understandable that we only see the point A, which is here and now, and point B, which is somewhere and sometime in the future that is not quantifiable. There could be the breadth of infinity between A and B, yet somehow, our minds force us to see the endpoint, often, without considering the journey it would take to get there. So when thinking of the amount of possible miles between point A and point B, I feel my heart sink; how could we ever hope to get there? To get to a place and time where you feel at complete ease with the universe and that everything you had come to desire along the way, had somehow become part of a tangible reality, that is arguably the goal of the majority of mankind. 

The only tricky thing about a mirage in the desert is that you have to be awake to see it. In order to see one, you have to wake up every day, and keep moving. Eventually, your body will see something that sends overflowing waves of hope through you. And so, you are able to carry on, on your journey to tomorrow. There will always be things to reignite a spark.

My inability to fathom the existence of a time and place completely separate, yet not removed from this moment is definitely challenging. While I know that the existence of such a place is undoubtedly true, as I have experienced a good deal of tomorrows, I also know that the mirage serves a greater purpose than simply to keep us searching for water in the desert. The journey to tomorrow can often be tiring, just as trudging through a desert is, though I think tomorrow serves as an opportunity for us to get better along the journey. That on our way to tomorrow we grow and learn, so that when we arrive in “tomorrow” we might be able to handle greater dunes in the desert or more venomous snakes hiding in the sand. 

It isn’t just about the first mirage, or the second, it’s all of them, all of the hopes for the future, and all of the experience of all the yesterdays and tomorrows that contribute to an arrival at point B; somewhere and sometime quite unquantifiable.