NaNoWriMo 2020
The Wind Blows Over Me Part 16: The Will of Fire
Preface: this is my series of RAW and UNEDITED daily posts for NaNoWriMo. It’s going to be extremely imperfect, lauden with grammatical and spelling errors, but brimming with potential. I post it mostly for myself, but invite any daring souls to try and keep up with the winds that blow me to tomorrow :wind_face:.
Click here for the table of contents
Day 97 (NaNoWriMo Part 16)
The Will of Fire
A dream is worth less than nothing if you have no one else to share it with.
I came across this quote a long time ago in a random website named 50 Of The Most Motivational Anime Quotes Ever Seen. I’m someone who likes to be inspired by others to keep going when I’m down in the dumps, and for some reason these quotes especially resounded with me. Since a lot of anime universes take place in a world far-off yet eerily mirroed to our own, the element of fantasy, the idea that the impossible can regularly be instantiated into existence, is a worthwhile concept to bring to our own reality as well. in fact, it’s not far off to say our reality is a fantasy realm! Steampunk is a genre where magic and technology intermingle to bring both amazing and horrifying inventions to life, and I’d wager to say software development is just a lamer version of magic scribing.
Digressions aside, this quote stuck by me the longest. Not necessarily because it was the most inspirational, but really because it was the closest to reality. Instead of it being a “go get em champ” motivation ,it is forewornign and wisdom. Wisdom always strikes me as one of the most valuable and least useful tidbits of advice that come into my life: it makes sense, there is experiecne behind these words, but it doesn’t FEEL real in the sense that I don’t understand what the stakes are in not NOT following wisdom. And the wording in this sentence is very perculiar as well: a dream is worth less than nothing. Something of value adds to your life. Something without value does not add or subtract to your life. What does it mean when something is worth less than nothing? Is it a burden, stringing you along because you allow it yourself tell. And that brings home to the hardest question of all…
What’s in a dream?
“There are no regrets. If one can be proud of one’s life, one should not wish for another chance.”
Human life is is short and fleeting everyday. Time moves differerently for those idling by, those suffering, and those striving to forge a better tomorrow for themelves. I’m young compared the median age of citzens in my country (around 39 years old), but after 25 years of essentially idling and riding the rails I was told to travese on, I’m starting to find the place I need to be. But the crazy thing, this search only brings more questions than answers. But after continually trying more and more, others answers become abundantly clear: the places I shouldn’t be.
I come home late from working on my own shenanigans, and see my dad lounging around in front of the tv and my mom cooking up one of the same 14 dishes she rotates around. This is my life everyday when I come home: there are almost no irregularities from this routine. I think to myself: how lazy can these people get? Do they crave nothing but the same routine monotony everyday?
Their stories growing up are a lot different. Both grew up in very unlike upbringings in a country so small, it’s barely a blip in most world maps. Despite the small size of the country, the chances of my parents meeting was unlikely in most scenarios. What brought them together was the chance to leave their home nation: caught in the middle between two warring idelogies, they sided with the global superpower rumoured to be the chance to wealth. The chance to freedom. Two aspects almost imaginary in the country where thery grew up: not only was it small, it was impovershed as heck. Save for a handful of foreigners exploiting the native people of my parent’s nation, being poor was not a choice: it was a lifestyle embedded into the culture.
“The moment you think of giving up, think of the reason why you held on so long.”
Through a lot of obstacles, lucky breaks, and choice meetings with the right people, they met, settled down in a place where others like them who also moved to this nation settled down as well, and began raising a family. But like most other tales, settling down is not where the story ends: the closer truth is that one chapter closes and another chaoter beings. But even these settling down affair did not simplify their life: if anything, the stakes became higher. My mom had to step down from her working job to become the homemaker, and my dad became the sole breadwinner for not one, two, but eventually three kids. My mom was also in a weird political situation with the country and if overstepping her boundaries, could find herself deported back to her home country, away from her husband and kids. All these factors and more led to my dad’s eventually downturn and hospitlization, but through his willpower and probably an immense amount of luck, he pulled through.
Those days are long gone now. I’m gradduated from college with my corporate job, and my two younger sisters will be finishing up college in about three more years, and seeing their studious nature passed down from both my parents, it should prove to be no problem for them to find lucrative jobs as well. That’s the other unusual bit in my family: from all the other first-generation Latinos in my extended family, my family alone emphasized the importance of reaching higher education. As most of my extended family came to this country illegally, being a high-tier high-education profession was out of the question if not a gigantic waste of time: no company would aaccept them soley because of their citizenship status. My parents had the unique ooportunity to be educated, and thus saw how it placed themslelves and others heads and shoulders above other workers with similar personalities and qualitifications,
Now that their chapter of child-rearing is nearly completion, I wonder what hopes my parents have the next chapter in their lives. Both have talked about returning back to the coutnry in whence they came: where we live is great for growing up, but terrible for settling down. Premium health insurance is only part of the undelying discrimation against the eldely in this coutnry.
What was the point of it all? If you spend your life growing up in one country, moving to another, yet moving back to the old country, was there any point in it all? I shudder to imagine how much different my lfie would be if I grew up in my parent’s home country. Comparing myself to my cousins in the motherland, they seemed so contrained in their opportunties. No matter how brilliant they wish to become, there just aren’t enough resources to go around for them to go somewhere outside the country. I’ve already had many opportunies to travel to other countires for both plaesure and purpose, and gain a greater scope of whatever’s out there. The same truth becomes abundantly apparent, that no matter how much I learn, there will always be greater unknowns yet to explore.
“You can die anytime, but living takes true courage.”
Humanity is a marvelous construct. Looking around, you don’t just see people. You see the surivival of generations upon geneations of humanity. 7 billion strong and counting, we are the product of unliekely surival from a myriad of threats, cosmic, microscropic, and everything in between. Yet we don’t walk around like survivors: if anything, we walk around like existence is suffering. Running raggard under the endless amount of complication from living in modern society, it seems like we hardly have time to breathe, much less make our own decisions. This quote from Fight Club rings deeply with me too:
Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
What’s stopping us? A million and one things, but all excuses when the fluff is all brushed off. I’d go as far to even say this is a greater conspiracy for those in power to stay in power… after all, my 10th grade history teacher one told me all it takes to rule a nation is to keep its people fat, dumb, and happy. A closer truth to reality could be: we will never taught to fail. Failing is bad, failing is the absolute worst state you can be, its best to be mediocre in all things instead of trying something new and failing tremendoundly. For me, these lingering thoughts of thep erson I could be became just that, linger thoughts that could eventually become a lingering will. But lingering grows no closer to the next step: it’s dawdling through overthinking and making excuse after exucuse. Funnyily enough, I ran into old man’s whose entire mantra was thing: making excuses, is inexcusable!
“While I spent my time overthinking, he spent his time sharpening his resolve”
“What you can’t accomplish alone, becomes doable when you’re with someone else.”
A new crisis emerges on the horizon. For the first time in recollected history, humanity of developed nations is declining. And it’s not because of the ill-distubtions of resources curtailing the increase of population (that’s tomorrow’s problem), but rather, the obsession with finding the the one. A fun fact is that romanticism of love is apparently a 13th century construct (citation pending). Before then, marriage was more of a function than a status. You find someone else comptatible, settle down, and expand your legacy for no better reason than everyone else is doing it. 21st century romance is quite a disaster in comparison. For the first time in humanity history, we are more interconnected than ever, in both communication in transporation. With a global menu on platter for someone who could maybe be the one, my generation has become complacent. Why settle when someone better is probably the corner. Maybe even, the other corner of the globe?
Compalency kills, not in a sudden and violent way, but more like a silent strangulation. This lackluster attempt to find somewhere even half-decent like our parents, will eventualyl lead to finding no one. It’s almost surreal and dystopian watching people use these modern-day dating apps: one look and you already know what you don’t like. The problem is especially prevalent in places like the Far East: one particular country took curbing their popuplation growth to a whole new level by limiting each family to having one child only. Problem is, women were traditionally treated as property instead of their own person, so bearing a male was better for family presige. In a completely unexpected turn of events (sarcasm), there is now a gender imbalance where millions of men outnumber the number of females living the country. Worse yet, these millions of eligible bachelors have the audacity to continually rule out women who don’t fit their unrealistic standards, thus the women left over are sadly known as the “leftover women”. But the question is kind fascinating: would you rather end up in a loveless relationship with someone you will never live up to, or be free to die alone but in the love of your own self?
I think the decision I’ve made, is a realm in between. Not nececesarily looking for something completely functional, but someplace where love can grow. I’ve come across a fascinating phrase today: marriage isn’t the proof that you marriage is real, but instead the the daily challegen to proof that it was real in the first place. And that’s just the kind of thing I adore: a grand challenge where rthe first step is to wake up everyday and move towards it.
“Wanting to be needed, therefore wanting to be strong. What’s so wrong with that?”
Something to protect, huh?…
“If you wanna make people dream, you’ve gotta start by believing in that dream yourself!”
There’s two types of people I’ve come to typecast now: the creators and the consumers. Creators make things as their namesake dictates: they take what’s inside to produce something for others outside. Consumers are the opposite: they take things others have produced outside and internialize them. To really be a well-rounded person, you need elements of both. Creativity doesn’t occur in a box, it’s melded and influenced by the people we come across. But creation is hard: to create for yourself is easy, to create for others to consume and even be influenced by it? Near impossible… but only if you belief it so. With that, I have a new phrase I’l like to share with you all: it’s probably been stated by others, but I’ll claim it as a personal original:
Your mentality becomes your reality.
It is a nice rival to the more popular and well-known phrase, “self-fulfilling prophency.” You worry about something so much that it consumes you, infects others, and eventually becomes reality.
Why can’t the opposite be true?
If you truly believe with all your heart that whatever you create, thoguh imperfect now, will evnetually be the key to your voice reaching others, to make them think differenttly, to make them act differently, then I implore you to conitunue. The road is hard: nothing worth having in this life is easy, after all. But if have the will to see this through, the will of fire to ignite imagination and possibility in the dormant candles of others, then maybe…
Possibility doesn’t have to happen tomorrow. Opportunities may have come and go in the past, but today is a new today, and today will always lead to tomorrow. What are you waiting for?
“The ticket to the future is always open.”
“Time flows differently for those who try to actually get stuff done and those who don’t. You’re also someone who gets stuff done too, right? Get going. You already have everything you need to get what you want done.”
Today’s word count: 2,430 words
Total word count until today: 32,433 words
@mariasokolowska @michellebasey @sabweld @philkastelic @nicolaworley @ParisaR @sydneydobersteinlarock @wildcat @dragon @homeroom11