Please

I woke up last night around four. I felt this hurt inside. The feeling i have failed in what i had set out to do.

What was that? To get out in the world. To become known. To meet people, talk to people. Like i do now, in Rotterdam, on a smaller scale. The woman i met on my walk to the Rottemeren. The woman i met when i ate a chip with mayo sitting on the side of the market. The woman i met today in the pharmacy. The man i met on the beach while i was walking from Scheveningen to Hoek van Holland. The man i talked while he was brushing sand into the joint on the Binnenrotte. Simple everyday meetings, everyday talks.

I enjoy that. Lots. I try to smile to people i walk by. Not all the time, no. But usually i do. Some people smile back, some say goodday. Some look angry, or surprised, or scared. I am careful.

I feel it does matter. It is important.

I do not know this world. I do follow the news, but i do not trust it. It has a tendency to focus on the bad stuff. It shows half the world. Or even less. Even here in Rotterdam the place is not like it is portrayed. In promotion video’s you see the best places, from the best sides, in the best weather. It is not like that.

But i digress.

What did i set out to do? To become known, to get to know the world and the people living in it a little bit better. As i said two days ago, to save the world. Which is a big thing to say! I don’t mean as in the world is set out to fail and i’m the one person to set it right. But it is also not that whatever you do doesn’t matter. It does matter.

I was born in the 60s. The 50s seemed like a lifetime before. Seemed like it was an all together different time. Now i think of my niece, who is born in the 90s. The 80s must mean the same thing for her.

But the world is still the same. Moving through time in the same pace. We, the people, are simply staying here for a short time, trying to be happy, trying to live. Through the last century, the one before that. Before that. Before that.

For me, and i think for most people, the past is like a million years ago. A time you can not get to anymore. Vanished. Disappeared. The future is not here either. It is a definite unknown. Even though you know you read this in a time after 4 November 2015, the future is still not there. You travel with everybody else in this ever present now.

It is also easy to forget. It is easy to have a pension, to have an insurance, to say you will work until you are 65, 66, 67. It is easy to set boundaries around your life. This is the time you work. This is your free time. This is your time for sleep. This is your time to eat. This is your time for sex. Everything in its own box. To live your life as you think you should, as you think everybody else does.

This world is more and more set. Defined. Compartmentalized. The first world. The third world. The rich world. The poor world. The rising world. Countries are all defined and constricted. This is mine and that is yours. Language is a maze of different meanings. What do you say? What do you mean? What is this all about?

I don’t know what life i will be living. I don’t know how long this life in western Europe will stay like this. This rich. This scared. But also loving and caring. I don’t know for how long our money will be worth what it is now. For how long you can buy the food you eat in the supermarket. We assume it will stay like this. But i’m pretty sure it won’t. Things are changing every day.

I do long for a public life. But it might be different from what i imagine.

No, of course it will be different.

What i dream, what i imagine, is settled in myself and in my past. What is new, what is the future of me, is still unknown. And i want to get to know it. I want to get to live it. I truly do.

Please.

Published on November 4, 2015 at 6:00 by

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