Webs of Illusion

"You have an astonishing capacity to fool yourself.  Remember that when you're tempted to run off and pursue your illusions."


I woke up first thing this morning, stumbled into the bathroom still sobering up from my deep sleep and lifted the toilet seat cover to reveal a giant spider. He moved so quickly, equally as frightened as I was at the unveiling of his hideout and fell into the toilet bowl. I quickly flushed it and put the cover back down. Somehow the fear those little terrors used to instill in me has waned and I marvelled over how that even happened.

It is always most interesting when the books I stumble upon pose theories I've been questioning myself. I recently confided to someone that I've spent this entire year not knowing what was real and what was not. I thought it stopped there, that merely being able to somehow deduce what was actually true and what was illusion could help decipher the code of confusing occurrences and bring some semblance of understanding to the tornado that has been this year.

But then I had a thought.

What if what seems to be real is in fact not? And the things I thought were all in my head were what was actually the truth? Just because something is real doesn't mean people will accept it as their reality. "What if I just box this up and put it over here, never to be looked at again" a friend told me of a recent longing he'd been having. And I had to wonder, ignoring our heart, pretending the feelings we have are mistaken doesn't make them ingenuine. It merely makes us unreal. Fear. Reason. Self doubt. Insecurity. These keep us from stepping out of our little box of familiarity and safety. But what greatness was ever achieved in such predictable curcumstances?

Certainly nothing I hoped my life would reflect.

I always hoped somehow that someone would come to my show and fall madly in love with me because of my brilliant performance.  It didn't even matter who, it was just the thought that somehow the passion I brought to the role would instill passion in another.  A hopelessly romantic notion yet very much a genuine desire in my heart. But what an illusion, I reminded myself.
And somehow such illusions stepped out of their set boxes and took on the shape of reality, for now at least. Whether that reality was to endure the shifts of time was yet to be determined. But at present, I smiled with the secret that someone had in fact seen me, in a way I only dreamed was possible.

The good thing about enduring so much grief is that you are given the gift of revelation in discovering that you truly are capable of handling anything. If you get what you want, if you can't have what you want, if it's a Prince or merely another illusion, as callous as it sounds, it really doesn't matter. Finally, for the first time, you're enough. You can eat your brunch alone, enjoying your book and the hum of people around you and not feel a longing for someone or something else. You've learned that whatever, whomever, however it comes, something is happening. And how freeing to finally see that this something doesn't need your assistance, the push and pull of your conniving will. It will be or it won't. And it satisfies to know what's meant to be, 'twill be, just as 'twas always written.