“Love life greater than the that means of it? Sure, actually.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Once I was a toddler, there was a particular second throughout nightfall when the outdated sodium lanterns switched on within the streets, morphing the world from one in all saturation into one in all yellow monochrome, and it at all times made me unhappy.
One such day, my dad requested me why I grew to become so quiet throughout these evenings. I wasn’t positive what to reply—how did he not really feel the identical means?
The night had simply begun, and the ditch outdoors had began freezing. Trying by way of the window, I may see the clouds of individuals’s breath within the air.
“Let’s get an ice cream within the village,” he mentioned.
I sat on the again of his bicycle, and the yellow world was drifting by. The individuals on the streets had misplaced their shade. The store was about to shut, however we have been simply in time.
Moments later, we have been standing outdoors the store, immediately underneath a type of lanterns. My dad was holding his bike within the snow, having fun with his ice cream with sprinkles.
“Lekker he?” he mentioned. (“Scrumptious, huh?”)
I’ve by no means been positive, nevertheless it felt as if in that second, he meant to say, “We’re each feeling this collectively, aren’t we?”
On Staying Gentle-Hearted
I’m thirty now, and it’s been ten years since I misplaced my dad to most cancers. In hindsight, rising up felt very similar to these evenings when the sodium lights lit up the streets: with time passing by, the world inevitably misplaced a few of its shade.
Damaged hearts, unhealthy selections, desires that’ll by no means make it into actuality, phrases unstated, too late to be mentioned. Extra issues to look again on, to be bitter about, or to get caught on someplace alongside the best way. Time leaves its marks a method or one other, and no one appears to flee it.
How will we address this truth of life? And the way can one maintain onto shade, resist rising bitter, and keep light-hearted like a toddler? Is it even doable?
Rising up, I watched individuals address this in numerous methods: clinging to careers, projecting it onto companions, turning to gurus, or just turning gray themselves. Others obtained drunk on the concept that with sufficient effort, they may make a change on this world.
I subscribed to the latter, pledging myself to a quest to remain lighthearted as I’d get older.
In my twenties, I might lose myself in philosophy, the humanities, powerlifting, buying and selling, touring, filmmaking, and writing. I cherished being busy, being neurotic, staying up late, attempting to study new issues, new concepts, new views—something to struggle off embitterment. It felt as if the pursuit of significant solutions justified the meaninglessness of most of life’s struggling.
Certainly one of my earlier mentors in artwork college in the future mentioned to me, “Sam, being a romantic on this world is likely one of the hardest issues you are able to do.” I didn’t absolutely perceive her on the time, however as with most issues she mentioned, they might solely make sense years later.
All through my twenties, seen from the skin, I fared fairly effectively. However even in moments when life was genuinely good, the query remained unresolved: how can we keep gentle within the coronary heart whereas carrying the load of the lingering previous?
The extra I discovered, the bleaker the world gave the impression to be. It obtained me to a degree the place the sodium-lamp-feeling stopped being one thing that occurred solely within the evenings and had change into one thing that was at all times there. The colours didn’t come again within the mornings anymore.
There got here a interval the place I’d exhausted my identified world fully—or no less than, that’s what it felt like. Each reply I discovered produced a bleaker world than the one earlier than it. And someplace in that monochrome stretch, a thought stored returning—not precisely as a plan, however as a form of assurance: that the door was there if I wished it. That I may step out.
Throughout that point, I spoke to a girl who was gentle, filled with shade, and at all times appeared to smile. She had a tea field that didn’t have purple bush, mint, or Earl Gray. As an alternative, she’d have Namastea, empatea, tearapy, and many others. Truly, she forgot the precise flavors, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.
We spoke of many issues, and every time she reacted with a smile, a joke, a bizarre face, by no means dismissing the load of our conversations, however at all times selecting the sunshine.
The steam of my teacup was gently flowing upward. Outdoors, the snow was dripping water. A younger tree had began to blossom.
“Aren’t you merely a person who comes and goes, exploring as genuinely as he can? In that case, why not proceed exploring? Certain, it gained’t be a handy life-style, however who cares?” she mentioned.
“You don’t care, do you?”
I noticed then that in my seek for solutions, I had ceased the seek for questions.
The Unknown
The unknown is a toddler’s buddy—till the kid grows up and it turns into its enemy, inflicting heartache and hopelessness.
That hopelessness led me into the abyss, and inside that abyss, I discovered I had nothing left to lose. And if I had nothing left to lose, then I may go anyplace and do something.
The unknown that had change into my enemy was abruptly the one place left that also breathed with life.
So I went searching for it.
My love and I walked backwards for 2 months throughout northern Spain, actually backwards, on the Camino de Santiago, as a result of we wished to know what “embracing the unknown” really felt like. At first, we have been continually braced for disaster as a result of we couldn’t see the place we have been going.
However with sufficient slowing down, nothing horrible occurred. As an alternative, the unknown step by step stopped feeling like a factor to be cautious of, and we discovered ourselves feeling lighter, freer, and extra current.
Then we left Amsterdam fully and moved to the campo of Panama, as a result of we wished to know what occurs in actual solitude, distant from something distracting and acquainted.
In that solitude, I discovered myself face-to-face with every thing I’d been outrunning: the unwillingness to simply accept issues as they’re, the necessity “to be one thing” in a world that felt bleak, and the frantic want to make sense of all of it.
Discovering Your Ice Cream
Attending to know my dad by way of the tales of others, it seems he had been fighting existence simply as a lot as I had. I simply by no means noticed it. In spite of everything, he was Dad: the one that knew every thing and will repair something.
However on that exact night time, I believe he knew what I used to be going by way of. And he didn’t attempt to repair it, clarify it, or rationalize it into oblivion.
As an alternative, he obtained on his bike and rode us to the ice cream store.
I take into consideration that lots now—not concerning the ice cream itself, however moderately the refusal to let the monochrome ‘win.’
He didn’t struggle the sodium lanterns or fake the world wasn’t turning colorless. He simply determined that wasn’t a adequate purpose to skip out on vanilla with sprinkles.
The opposite night, sitting within the solar with my love in Panama, overlooking the heights of Volcán Barú and the day slowly turning into night time, I caught myself saying,
“Lekker hé?”
I noticed that in that second, I used to be residing in the identical place my dad had been all alongside. Not above the world, not in opposition to it, however inside it, having fun with one thing good, subsequent to somebody I like.
About Samuel van Keeken
Samuel van Keeken is a Dutch author, artist and filmmaker primarily based in Panama, the place he co-founded Similar Worldwide: a house for essays, creative works, and retreats. At its coronary heart is the Similar Technique, a framework for cultivating existential braveness and significant motion in on a regular basis life.
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